


i ran so far away

by UnintentionallySketchy



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Chance Meetings, Christmas, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Mechanic!Jamie, Romantic Comedy, Teacher!Dani
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:20:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27658073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnintentionallySketchy/pseuds/UnintentionallySketchy
Summary: In the end; she ran.It’s what she did in the beginning, too, if she was really honest with herself.Or;Running away from her wedding, Dani's car breaks down on the side of the road. She's rescued (accidentally) by a grumpy curmudgeon who believes Christmas is for saps. Too bad they are going to be forced to spend it together.
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 271
Kudos: 581





	1. The Night Before Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> I took christmas and mechanic!jamie prompts and somehow turned it into one of those sappy lifetime movie in 5 Chapters.

In the end; she ran.

It’s what she did in the beginning, too, if she was really honest with herself. 

* * *

She really should have grabbed a jacket on her way out the door, she thinks to herself as the icy air pierces her skin and settles in her shaking bones. She had left in such a hurry; a split second decision that ended with her here, in a two thousand dollar filthy dirty wedding dress, shivering under the pale moonlight glow, next to her broken down piece of shit hatchback from 1997.

She didn’t know what did it in finally. Could have been the motor, she suspects, or it could have been the oil or gas or tires or the fact that it was a twenty year old hunk of metal fuckall. All she knows is that it’s just after 1am and she’s on an exit-less stretch of highway some 50 miles outside Chicago and it’s two days - well, just now one day before Christmas. 

Nay a car has reared its resounding muffle down the road in what feels like hours but in reality has only been about 20 minutes. She decides that purely because she’s not dead, she doesn’t think, and she isn’t sure would survive hours out here in this cold.

She kicks at the tires and immediately bites her lip when she’s reminded of what stubbing a frozen toe feels like. Like glass, ice, shattering. She’s starving, she realizes, when her stomach grumbles low and long and she remembers how little she’s eaten in the last week out of pure concentrated anxiety [and existential dread but that’s a different story for a different time and a different place]. 

Dani is near hopelessness when she feels the first snowdrop fall onto her nose. The child in her wants to stick her tongue out and catch as many as she can, but the adult she truly is can barely stop her teeth from chattering across the sky like a toy from a vintage thrift store. 

She remembers, vividly, watching an episode of - well, she can’t remember the show off the top of her head - and they went through the stages of dying of hypothermia and now she’s counting on her frozen fingers how many signs she exhibits. It alarms and then panics her when she thinks she remembers that mental confusion is one of the first symptoms. She starts naming reindeer to keep herself sharp and not focus on how many steps away she is from forgetting her own name.

“You’re Dani Clayton. The year is 2017,” she looks around herself, darkness enshrouding every inch that surrounds her, “and you have no idea where the fuck you are.”

* * *

It’s maybe ten minutes later when she thinks she sees headlights off in the distance and tries to convince herself that this isn’t step number 5, hallucinations. 

She thinks? She’s going to have to remind herself to look up all the stages of hypothermia when she gets out of here.

And while she’s busy contemplating whether or not she can’t remember any of these steps because she’s dying or if she can’t remember any of it because she’s forgetful, the truck [definitely not a hallucination now, she decides] is closer and she thinks she’s got about one shot at this point for survival.

So naturally, she jumps out in the middle of the road.

The sound of the tires skidding is deafening and Dani sighs because the sound is one hundred percent real and she’s about to be rescued in the middle of God knows where by a stranger in a truck; so long as they didn’t hit her. 

It occurs to her far too late to move, so her only action at that moment is to scream. Scream long and shrill and so loud that she’s sure if Eddie had the ears of a dog he would have been able to find her instantly.

And then it’s silent. Her mouth is still open and she’s still screaming but she can’t hear anything else but that and she thinks maybe she’s dead. There are two bright lights and she can feel them burning her eyes beneath her closed eyelids and it's like looking into the sun. It's so bright and quiet.

And then it’s loud again. It’s ear piercing actually because on top of her scream she hears another. But this one is words and it’s low and it’s British and she never thought her guardian angel would be British.

“What the fucking Christ is wrong with you!” And hot damn, because when Dani opens her eyes she discovers that her guardian angel is pretty hot too.

She stares at the eyes in front of her, both blue and green, sinful and wild and gentle. There’s fire in them, anger perhaps or maybe fear. Dani settles into them and her screaming dilutes to a healthy panic as she realizes that she’s alive and she can feel the way this stranger is gripping onto her barely covered arms that are slowly turning blue.

“The fuck is wrong with ya’ mate?” This woman, this goddess in a blue truck who just barreled down the highway and [nearly] directly into Dani, panicking too, it’s quite obvious by the way she’s breathing. The puffs of icy breath swirl in the air as she looks up and down Dani’s body for any signs of trauma.

Dani studies the way the words sound on the tongue of the woman before her. She can’t decide if she thinks some of the vowels sound Scottish or Irish or,

“You’re British.” Dani decides. Well, she didn’t decide. The universe decided, ultimately, but Dani decides she agrees with the universe in this moment.

This woman, stranger, is beautiful, Dani thinks. Her hair is pulled back and she’s got it up in a tied bandana and she has a classic 80s beauty to her with a leather jacket and tight black jeans tucked into a pair of hiking boots. Her eyes are glowing and light, her hands are pressing all over Dani quickly, checking for damage, and it’s not until Dani speaks that her hands settle somewhere permanent.

“You alright?” The woman nods and takes a step back, letting go her firm hands she has pressed on either side of Dani’s face. 

“Am I dead?” Dani presses her cold hand to her face and waits to see if she can feel either of them. 

“You don’t look dead.” The woman raises her left eyebrow and takes its friend, the lip, with it. The smirk sends a flash of warmth through Dani and she thinks she could thaw.

“I don’t feel dead.” And she doesn’t, she knows that now. She thinks she finally feels alive for the first time in a long time.

“Then I think we can both agree that you are in fact, not dead.” She punctuates the last two words with a wink and a smile and Dani finally takes a deep breath. She was [now] confident that she would live to stress about everything one more day.

The woman looks around the two of them and it’s obvious to Dani that she’s thinking. Weighing exactly what to do next as the fog from the deep night air settles onto the earth. 

“Right then, so you wanna tell me why you’re sitting in the middle of the road in a wedding dress at 2 in the morning.” The woman pulls Dani by the arm out of the middle of the road and over to Dani’s abandoned car - cold and idle and forgotten.

“My car broke down. I don’t have any service to call anybody so I’ve been standing out here waiting for somebody to come by and--” Dani’s running her hands through her hair and pulling at the roots. She looks at the watch on the strangers wrist; 1:52 am.

“Jesus, in that?” The brunette with the beautifully mysterious accent point to her dirty dress and thin material and her voice raises at the end as if she’s shocked Dani’s not pulling some elaborate prank. “Well you’re lucky you di’nt die of hypothermia.”

Her eyes roll and Dani smiles because that’s what she’s been saying this entire time. She swears she was nearly to step something-or-other and she was only moments from,

“I was really close to stripping off all my clothes and rolling in the show.” Dani’s eyes pop and she’s looking at the stranger directly under the lights now and she can see the dirt that gathers in her skin and the way her eyes pull together in confusion and her lip juts out and it’s almost a pout and almost a question. 

“I’m sorry - what?”

“Nothing.” Dani shakes her head.

The woman starts to walk back to her truck and Dani, for a moment, panics that maybe this visitor was only temporary and she’s going to be back to being alone again any second. But then she sees a hand wave her over and a truck door open and the invitation is for her and only her.

“Alright well, we need to get you out of the cold. I’ve got a hitch in the back of my truck. I can tow you back to mine. You won’t find anybody out here on a holiday weekend.” The woman’s voice is raspy, Dani realizes. It’s got this low pitch that hums in the still air and it vibrates Dani from the inside out. 

It should be curious, why she is now jumping into the passenger seat of a stranger on an abandoned highway right around the same time she should be jumping into her marital bed for the first time, but when the woman leans over her body from where she stands on the lift and turns the engine over into a gentle hum and presses a few buttons - Dani can only focus on how her body is starting to heat up quickly from the hot air that blows, the seat that heats and the body that energizes her.

It’s only a few minutes before her car is hitched up to the back of the pickup and they are barreling down the road. Dani studies the woman’s profile. Her jaw is sharp and defined and her nose is delicate. Her hair is messy, pulled up, falling around the bandana and into her eyes. Her skin is unblemished but has streaks of dark oil across her cheeks. Her hands are strong, boney, and firm as they grip the steering wheel. It’s silent, the radio off and the bumps of the road as the only soundtrack to their drive.

Dani is so busy getting lost in the angles of her guardian angel’s name that it takes nearly twenty minutes into their drive to realize that she doesn’t even know her name and hasn’t shared her own.

“Thanks for picking me up.” The woman doesn’t move to look at her, just stays silent and focused on the road in front her. 

“I’m Dani, well Danielle, Dani Clayton. Everybody calls me Danielle. My mom always insisted and then Edmond, Eddie -- my, um-- well, and my class calls me Miss Danielle. I teach 3rd grade. Anyway, it’s Danielle.”

The woman chuckles under her breath but her eyes stay ahead, quiet and brooding. Dani thinks that maybe this nut is a hard shell to crack when there’s no response and she goes to open her mouth again just to fill the silence but then she hears the rasp of the other woman’s cadence for the first time since she turned the truck over. 

“What do you prefer to be called, then?”

Dani has to think about it because nobody has ever asked her that and the choice feels freeing. “Dani, I guess?” She rolls it around on her tongue, testing out how it sounds and it sounds like a decision that was never hers to make before and it’s really the first step towards freedom. “I think. I never got a chance to choose.”

Greenish blueish eyes find her in the dark and the stranger smiles again. “Dani teaches third grade. Regular old Mary Fucking Poppins.”

Dani laughs and it’s from her stomach because she’s far from practically perfect but she feels new and like she’s ready to explore what she could be.

“Jamie.” The woman states like it’s a gift and Dani knows that it is because even though she knows nothing about this stranger, about this Jamie, she feels like not many do. 

Dani found that she’s pretty good at reading people, albeit mostly children, and she’s trying to read the feeling behind those two syllables. She’s cold, maybe not in temperature but in candor and she’s got a lot of layers and baggage and Dani thinks for a moment that maybe not many know much more about her.

But Dani can’t help to wonder more, wonder deeper, “Jamie no last name?” 

“Jamie no last name.” And it feels like a closed topic with nothing else to add until Dani mumbles more to herself than to anybody else,

“Everyone has a last name.”

Jamie’s eyes harden briefly, swiftly, as the passing headlights from an oncoming car flash quickly in their reflection. Dani wants to pry them open and let them flood out with their secrets. 

“Well then you can make one up for me.” It’s dry and it’s sarcastic but Dani decides that she doesn’t much care for the fact that Jamie is clearly just fucking with her when she says it.

“Taylor.” Dani decides promptly after a near seven minutes of total silence and ruminating over such a meaningful task, “Jamie Taylor.”

“Whatever you say, Poppins.” And it’s probably a bit of a dig, but it feels sort of nice to have something that’s just for her, tailored to fit, by a mysterious stranger in the dark.

It’s only a few more turns and several more minutes before the truck turns off the paved comfort of the back country roads and onto a gravel stretch that’s long and it’s ominous and all Dani can see in front of her is a lit up structure that looks somewhat like a mansion but all the way like a bad idea. It suddenly registers that she doesn’t know this Jamie or her enigmatic British accent or her secretive smile or her cryptic eyes.

“You’re not taking me out here to murder me, are you?” But the laugh she gives off is calm because even though this unknown person just walked into her life, she feels a sense of comfort in her presence. 

“Keep talking and I just might.” Dani falters, her hands that had previously been tugging at themselves fall into her lap and she looks over at Jamie, jaw dropped and curious. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea.

* * *

The house is stunning when they get inside. It’s all wood and oak and dark and there are these two beautiful twin staircases that lead to a landing. It’s dark and it’s almost as mysterious as the woman who lives here but Dani can’t help but marvel at the architecture. 

“Wow it’s beautiful.” She whistles under her breath. She’s never seen anything so stunning.

Jamie follows her inside and shuts the door to the cold, locking it and moving around the blonde rooted in place. She places her keys in a bowl by door and looks back at her new house guest. Dani walks towards the steps, finding herself being pulled in like a magnet to the energy of this grand home.

Jamie is, to her credit, unimpressed by it all if her tone is anything to judge by. Dani assumes she’s used to this all, used to its beauty. Though she can’t imagine she would ever tire of it.

“It’s too late for the grand tour tonight.” Dani loves the way the word, _tour,_ falls out of her mouth. It’s foreign and it’s beautiful and it’s uninterested. “But I promise it’s all just-”

“Perfectly splendid” Dani finishes in an exaggerated accent of her own. Turning to face Jamie who was still lingering behind her. She’s met with a face filled with befuddlement and annoyance.

“The guest room is down the hall here.” Jamie nods her head to the dark corridor behind her. Dani can tell she’s ready to go her own way and leave Dani alone with her thoughts. But as Dani takes in the moodily lit room it suddenly occurs to her,

“You know it’s Christmas right?”

“Can’t imagine.” Jamie’s tone is impatient and Dani knows she doesn’t know this woman or anything about her but she’s just so taken back by this magnificent home being bare on a holiday that it’s seemingly made for. 

“Well it’s just that -- where are your lights or your tree?”

Jamie looks around as if trying to figure out why Dani cares and Dani wishes she had an answer for that. She drops her head and slowly starts to walk back towards Dani, inching closer and closer and moving further into her just when Dani thinks she will stop.

“Can you keep a secret?” Jamie leans in close as if whatever she’s about to say is of utmost importance “The grinch stole them.” And when she pulls her away her eyes are wide and sarcastic and Dani thinks she may hate this woman in a really wonderful way.

Jamie turns on her heel to walk back towards the guest bedroom, turning on the hall lights as she does. Dani trails her, hot on her heels, her voice high and sharp when she asks, “So nothing, huh? Not one piece of tinsel in this whole huge place? No tree? Or stockings?”

“I don’t believe in Christmas.” Jamie throws open the door to the room and gestures inside, flipping the light on the dark space. It's modest but warm. There’s a four poster bed in the center, two tables on either side, and a dresser in the far corner. 

Dani peaks inside at the doorway, taking it all in, holding her tongue to bring up how wonderful it is. Her body wraps around the molding as she checks all the corners, vetting it before turning back to Jamie who is close, only inches away and her eyes are locked on to Dani and she’s got just a faint smile on her face but it looks sad. 

“Like you don’t believe in the birth of Christ or--” Dani’s eyes flicker back and forth between the ones in front of them, heavy with questions and curiosity. 

But Jamie's eyes don’t have the answers when she leans in quickly, jolting, and Dani has to move her head out of the way of it’s pop, “I don’t believe in the ‘merry’ of it all.” 

“Oh well that’s--” Dani can feel Jamie’s breath on her cheeks and she fights the small urge she has just to lean in. Just slightly, just a press. But then the warmth is gone and Jamie is halfway down the hall when she yells without turning back,

“Goodnight, Poppins.”

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thoughts? I'd love to hear them.


	2. Christmas Eve

It’s cold when Dani steps out of the shower. 

It’s even colder when Dani realizes that aside from the set of pajamas that Jamie unceremoniously threw through the open door last night with a humph, she has absolutely nothing to wear. And she’s not about to put that godforsaken wedding dress back on.

She had found a towel in the bathroom that was across the hall from the guest room. It was fluffy and it smelled like detergent and nothing like home and Dani found herself enjoying the reprieve. She showered, scalding her body and scrubbing it raw with a lavender bar of soap - trying to wash away the last fifteen years of lies and misery.

Her phone buzzes again on the nightstand when she gets out, for what feels like the fiftieth time that morning, and she commits herself to check it later. Later, there will be a time for that all later.

For now she’s standing in the middle of the room, with nothing but this fluffy, albeit scant, towel and no other choice but to hunt down the cranky house owner and beg her to please help [again]. 

So that’s how she found herself walking around a house she was seeing for the first time in daylight, on the north side of 8am, in nothing but a towel. She checked the kitchen and found only a stack of washed pots and a full spice rack. She wandered back out to the grand foyer and through to the other side. 

The house was still, the air thick with emptiness. It was large and it felt unlived in. The walls felt dark and menacing. Dani could feel where happiness once was, but no longer existed.

She noted the paintings on the wall; one a beautiful landscape of what she guessed was the property. It was massive, vast and open and Dani felt comforted to know that it’s beauty lived just outside. There was a red barn and a silo, there was the house and there was what looked like a large shed or garage. 

She moved along to the next, this one a photo, a young girl sitting on the lap of a man with silver hair and smiling up at him with a twinkle in her eye. They were wearing matching red sweaters and there was a large wreath behind them. The little girl had a messy mop of curls falling into her eyes and a look of wonder on her eyelashes. The mark above her eyebrow told Dani that this was a photo of Jamie, little and innocent, with a smile so bright it would light the way of anybody trapped in the dark.

It made Dani smile, seeing that sort of joy on the face of the girl who had only exclusively frowned in her presence [with an occasional sarcastic smirk]. 

And speaking of that frown, 

“Can I help you?” The voice is loud and low and it startles Dani who backs up and around quickly, bumping into the hall table behind her. She balances herself; forgetting the towel that she had gripped in her hand as it falls to her waist.

“Fuck.” Dani mutters under her breath, and moves quickly to cover herself again.

Jamie looks more annoyed than amused, Dani observes when she finally rights herself and takes in the full appearance of the woman before her. She’s got tight black jeans, a plain black hoodie, and a pair of work boots on and Dani can’t help but assume that this is probably what Jamie wears every day. Her eyebrow is quirked upwards and her lips are hard set and stiff. Dani imagines this isn’t the first time Jamie [last name Taylor] has had a naked woman in her hallway.

Dani also imagines that those women were greeted a little kinder than Dani is right now.

“Whoops, that was awkward, wasn’t it?” Dani tries to cut the tension with a joke, any sort, even the worst kind.

“What are you doing?” Her voice is harsh and unforgiving and Dani wishes she has just put the wedding dress back on.

“I was hoping you might have some clothes I can borrow?” Dani looks from her hand gripping the towel back up to Jamie and then back down again; as if the inquiry should be obvious. But when Jamie says nothing, doesn’t even appear to register the question, Dani does what she always reminded herself to quit doing in silent pauses - she keeps talking. “Unless you rather I stay in a towel.”

And it doesn’t come out the way Dani wants it to, not at all, and,

“That’s not to say that you want me naked, that’s--that’s now what-- I just--I don’t know what you want when you’re naked. I mean, you might not like naked women. I don’t -- how would I, um, I--”

But Jamie’s lips are pulling up, even if only slightly, and Dani thinks that maybe amusement is starting to replace annoyance, and she thinks that if it only takes her feeling pretty stupid to make Jamie’s presence tolerable, then maybe that’s worth it. She thinks, but then it’s only a flash and Jamie’s face is hard again and she’s turning on her heel with a grumpy huff.

“I’ll bring you something,” is what Dani hears as she’s left standing alone in the long hallway and she grips onto the towel just a little tighter when she thinks about that smirk.

* * *

So that’s how Dani finds herself standing in the middle of the guest room, looking down at an oversized gray flannel shirt and a pair of baggy sweatpants, wishing that threads could talk.

The clothes are a clue, she thinks, into the world of the mysterious stranger who acts like she is a hassle, yet willingingly brought her here. They are faded, like they have been in and out of the wash and wear for years. Their ends are frayed and wise. They are worn, like they have been curled up in, cried in, slept in. There’s paint stains on the cuff of the shirt sleeve. There’s a bleach stain on the collar. Dani wonders briefly how many women have ripped at the buttons of this shirt in an effort to free the skin beneath it. A flash of heat travels through her at the thought until she shakes her hair out from underneath and sets back out into the hall, paying no mind to the way her phone buzzes again and again against the grain of the table; a cacophony of questions she doesn’t yet have answers to.

She finds Jamie again - a few hours later, after exploring the inches of the home [which she’s now decided is a mansion] on her own accord - bent over the engine of her broken down car in a shed not far from the front door.

Bent over and…

She’s abandoned the hoodie for just a plain white t-shirt and, oh, Dani hadn’t noticed the trails of ink that cover this woman. Her biceps, ticking with strain as they reach further into the mechanical mess, are painted in black and gray images. They move with the way each part of her arm flexes and Dani studies the way curly hair falls out of a tightly tied bandana and into her eyes as the sweat drips down her neck into her chest and her arms and,

She feels like an intruder, suddenly.

This isn’t the first time Dani has noticed the way the female body moves. It’s not the first time that she’s found herself lost in the way a woman breathes and blinks and it’s absolutely not the first time she’s watched a bead of sweat move across firm and smooth skin and wished she could just reach out and wipe it away with the tip of her finger. It’s not the first time Dani has ached to taste and slide and touch and,

Dani clears her dry throat. 

“It’s the engine.” Jamie states in a way that makes Dani feel like she’s been aware of her there the whole time. “I’ll need a few hours on it but it should be running just fine soon enough to get you back on your way.”

She looks up through her messy hair at the woman in her doorway. She pulls her arms back to her sides and Dani notices that oil is mixed in with the sweat and dirt that is slowly mixing itself in with the more permanent stains on muscled arms. Her face is locked in, waiting for a response, and when none comes she turns and moves further back into the garage.

Dani takes in everything around her. It’s a small space, smaller than matches the property, and it’s dirty but organized. There’s a large space heater warming the inside, a small counter littered with tools along the side, there’s spare tires stacked up in the back, and several shelves stacked with odds and ends that Dani can only assume are car parts lined up on the back wall.

There’s another vehicle tucked into the corner, covered in a white linen tarp. It catches Dani’s eye for a second and she has this urge to pull back the sheet and see what lies beneath but instead she just asks,

“Are you-- do you fix cars?” Dani calls out as her eyes absorb her surroundings, losing Jamie back behind her car and out of sight.

“I tinker.” Her voice is clipped and low and Dani hears one of the drawers open and the sound of metal clinking together.

“With cars? This looks like a lot for somebody who only tinkers.” Dani decides as she moves further into the garage, sliding her hand on top of the counter as she reaches it, taking up the dust that had settled long ago.

“I tinker with a lot of things. Cars are one of them.” Jamie’s voice is closer now, and Dani knows that if she were to turn around she would be greeted by the image of a woman who is making her think about a lot of the reasons she ran away from her wedding just last night.

So she doesn’t. Instead she notes all the newspaper clippings ripped out and taped to the wall. Her eyes scan them quickly, not taking in the words, as they move on to the next. Until they get to another photo - this of the same man as the portrait inside. He’s in this garage, sitting on a folded out chair and laughing with a cigar in his hand.

He seems kind, Dani can tell, jolly even. His eyes were wide and soft and she could practically hear his laugh through the still image. She wonders what happened to him.

“Is this your grandfather?” Dani’s voice is loud and curious as she turns around to find Jamie leaned back on the hood of her car and watching the blonde stranger rummage through her things. Dani bounces on her feet, nervous that she had been being studied. 

“No.” The word is firm, final, as Jamie walks forward and past, close and brushing, and grabs the towel that sits on the table. Dani has to move back a bit at the proximity and studies the way Jamie’s eyes travel down just briefly, a twisted smile playing on her face. “Nice shirt.”

And then she’s gone.

This woman, Dani thinks, is a sharp pain in the ass.

* * *

It feels like an intrusion, the way Dani sits and watches Jamie work on the car. She’s lost track of time, it’s probably been a few hours, but it’s been hard to track with the way the clouds have boxed in the sun’s journey across the sky. 

Jamie hasn’t said much, other than the occasional curse at the engine that won’t turn over, and stopped answering Dani’s litany of questions long ago.

_ How did you learn so much about cars? _

Or;

_ What do your tattoos mean? Did they hurt? _

Or;

_ Do you not speak to anybody or is it just me? _

Dani didn’t ask that last one but it’s been rolling around in her head on constant replay. Dani wraps herself tighter in the warm flannel and ignores each time it comes with a scent that is so uniquely Jamie. Instead, she just watches her. She watches the way her hands, strong, expertly fidget with wires and knobs. She watches the way Jamie wipes at her brow with a dirty towel and she wonders how long she’s been out here on her own. Jamie seems comfortable with the silence.

Jamie is under the car. She jacked it up a few feet off the ground and wheeled herself under, only her legs and the tiniest part of her bare midsection peeking out from below. Dani can’t help how her eyes take in the toned skin there and can picture in her head the way Jamie’s face is contorting in frustration with each  _ fuck _ or  _ bastard _ she mumbles to herself. 

It’s quiet now, save for the occasional howl of wind on the outside. Not a word has been said in some time and Dani broods over the tickling questions at the back of her mind. Like why she’s by herself on this giant property, why she’s alone on Christmas, why she seems to hate Dani’s presence with each passing moment. The quiet has moved from stifling to comfortable; just the clinging of metal on metal echoing in the background.

Which is why is startles Dani when she hears, quite loudly, “S’going to start snowing any minute.” 

Dani looks around herself, ready to ask how Jamie could possibly know that, when the woman rolls out from underneath and back into the stuffy garage air. 

“Feel the way the air just changed? Got all warm and then cold and then dull again?” Dani nods even though, no, she didn’t feel that. “Means it's about to start.”

And it did. Within minutes, the outside was blanketed in white and the heater inside the garage was no longer doing enough to keep Dani’s bones warm. She shivered in place and folded into herself while Jamie made her way over and around and through the room with a comfort and a confident step. 

“You can go inside, I don’t need you to babysit me out here.” Jamie nods towards the house when she catches Dani vibrate underneath a few layers. “Going to be a while to see if I can get this thing warmed up again.” Jamie kicks at the idle tires and Dani is just about to turn and go back to the house when the power flickers, once, twice, and then goes out with a pop. Leaving the quiet, cold machine to freeze over and wane in the darkness.

* * *

The house was entirely still. The white noise from the electricity had been extinguished and nothing but the soft breaths of Jamie and Dani remained. 

Dani sat on the oversized and cozy couch and listened as Jamie struck match after match to light a fire. 

“Fuck.” Jamie cursed as the fourth attempt was unsuccessful. “Can’t get this bloody wood to take.”

Dani watches as her face contorts in frustration. Her forehead creases and Dani can see the way the dirt and the oil from the garage settles in between the lines. There’s an urge to wipe away the marks, to smooth the skin, but it’s fleeting and it’s soon replaced by aggravation when Jamie turns to her with a look as if to say  _ this is somehow your fault. _

“Is the wood wet?” She offers in consolation, realizing only too late - when Jamie scoffs and turns back to the fireplace - that maybe it was a dumb question to ask.

“You think I haven’t lit a fire before? Don’t know how to,” Jamie strains as she reaches back into the pit further and moves around the logs, “check the fucking wood to see if it’s wet?” It’s all under her breath but Dani hears it and she sighs. Jamie certainly isn’t warm and welcoming enough to this house liveable for the both of them tonight.

_ Christ. _

Dani lets it go and curls into herself. She briefly considers retiring to the guest room until the power sparks back to life but it’s freezing in the manor walls and she can’t help but think if she’s going to freeze to death, she damn well won’t do it alone. And while this british biscuit may be a bit stale, she’s what Dani has for tonight.

The wood takes on the fifth strike of the match and soon she hears the way the wood begins to pop under the flame. She sits back and pulls the blanket tighter around her legs as Jamie lays down on the floor in front of the fireplace and takes a deep breath.

Dani studies her, the way her breath bounces in her chest and her lungs like a steady beat. She’s a mystery. Everything about her is a mystery. She’s cold and she’s short but she’s beautiful and Dani can see just a small bit in her that makes her want to press on. 

She has the hoodie back on now and Dani is only slightly upset that she can’t watch the way the pictures on her skin move. Watch the way they contort and dance and tell a story; a story that Jamie definitely doesn’t want to tell on her own.

Dani thinks back to their day so far, the way Jamie’s words are always clipped and tired and she wonders what made them that way. She thinks about that photo in the garage or that portrait in the hall and she knows there’s light in this woman, somewhere buried down deep. 

“Won’t be able to work on your car anymore until the power gets back on.”

The words startle her just a bit and it’s not because they are unexpected but because they aren’t and she can’t explain why that is.

“Oh, that’s-- that’s fine.” 

“For you maybe.” But Jamie, Jamie is a different story. Her moods come in and out like the tide as it changes. For now Dani’s ready to give up, ready to give in and just let this one wash away in the water but then,

Jamie gives a look that’s, well, it’s not harsh or hard or cold but it’s sad. It’s lonely. It’s lonely and Dani feels like maybe she was here for a reason - some reason she didn’t quite know yet.

“Hey, it’s really okay. I’ve got nowhere to be.” She smiles softly to Jamie and Jamie seems to accept this for a moment before she waves off her hand into the air and turns her head on the ground to finally meet Dani’s eyes.

“It’s Christmas eve. Don’t you have a family or a fiance to get back to? A country club to toast with eggnog and--”

“I’ve got nowhere else to be.” And she didn’t. She really didn’t.

* * *

The sun was setting low into the trees when Dani finally went back to her room. The sound of her phone buzzing was absent from her ears, but the pull of it was harsh in her chest. 

She was still in the oversized flannel and it had gone from ill-fitted to comfortable in just a few hours and the smell it carried, well, Dani wasn’t thinking about that.

She stepped in and glared at the entity on the end table that she knew she couldn’t avoid forever. She couldn’t ignore these people forever, these people who had always been her people and then suddenly were nobody. They suddenly were the people she left behind.

She can’t explain why she ran. Well, that’s not entirely true, she can explain it - she just wasn’t ready to yet. She wasn’t ready to face whatever it was that made her stand in that dressing room, turn on her heels, grab her keys and run. 

That’s what she always felt like doing, every minute these last 15 years with Edmund; running. She was always just on the precipice of it, just always right about to flee and free herself and then something, some little voice, always told her  _ wait, _ and  _ it might get better. _ But then there she was, about to make something so… permanent, and she couldn’t wait any longer. She couldn’t possibly stand to make herself wait for another night or another time to do this. She had to go, she had to  _ run. _

She should have left a note, she thinks she knows that now. But the thought of it never once crossed her mind. The thought of explaining herself never once occurred to her. She had been explaining herself far too long and now, now it was just time to be and act and run.

She picked it up, the buzzing object, and looked at it slowly. Read the names of the people who had called and called and texted and texted and she shuffled through them quickly, unable to stomach them all. She opened Eddie’s;

_ Danielle where are you? _

_ Is this some sort of joke? _

_ Why aren’t you answering your phone? Are you okay? _

_ Danielle, I’m sorry - if you want to stay at the school,  _ _ you can stay at the school but can you just come  _ _ back here so that we can talk? _

_ Why are you doing this? _

And then her mothers;

_ Do you realize how much you’ve humiliated me? _

_ Danielle, I have spent so much money on this! _

_ You are wasting everyone’s time. _

_ You are just so selfish, Eddie is beside himself _

Dani exited out of her messages and sat heavily on the bed. She didn’t know how she would ever begin to clean up this mess she had made. Her heart ached, it truly did. It ached for the boy who she had always loved, loved in ways she could never explain to him for fear of knowing it would never be enough. It ached for letting her family down. 

It was never what she wanted, she thought. It was never her intention to get to this place where she had lost herself and lost everyone’s belief in her. And even now, feeling free, she isn’t sure if the decision she so hastily made was right. She could have stayed and waited it out and she could have grinned and beared it. She could have, right? 

She could have, she thinks. But she didn’t.

“You decent?” The knock and a muffled voice and she jolted back into here and now.

“Uh-- uh, yeah I am. Come in.” Dani turns the phone off, the battery draining and not even beginning to consider returning any messages, and decides to leave it all to another day.

The door creaks slowly as Jamie peaks her head in, taking in the woman before her. She fails to mention the tears in Dani’s eyes and for that Dani is grateful.

“I put together a plate of food.” She starts and then straightens as her feet align with the top part of her body as it leans into the room. “It’s not much but it’s something and you need to eat something.” 

Dani’s stomach growls and it occurs to her that she hasn’t eaten since yesterday. 

“I have wine too.”

And that, that she could use. That she could use a whole lot of. So she smiles back and she swallows down the lump in her throat and she says,

“I’ll be right there.”

* * *

The food was surprisingly good, all things considered. Jamie had thrown together a mix of cold cuts and cheese that had stayed chilled in the dark fridge and Dani laughed at how different this was from the feast she would be eating at home.

Christmas Eve had always been a spectacle with the O’Mara family. This year would have been over the top in celebration and spirit and wine and Dani does find herself longing for the familiarity of what the holiday brings as she sits in a dark room, lit only by a raging fire, with zero sign of the season around.

She sips at her drink and lets the way the alcohol warms her trickle down her throat and into her fingers and toes. It’s quiet still, but it feels comfortable now - with full stomachs and hearty wine. Jamie sits beside her, a step closer from the floor earlier, with a thick blanket wrapped around her thin frame. 

Dani finds it easy to watch her. Her presence is calming, steady, though dark. Her eyes are mysterious and her lips are firm, set in a line. Her jaw is sharp, so sharp, and Dani briefly wonders if it would cut her if she just reached out and touched it.

“Like what you’re looking at then?” Jamie’s low voice interrupts her musings and Dani finds herself blushing into her glass as she brings her hand to her cheek and leans deeper into the cushion.

“Just wondering how somebody so young can already be so jaded by Christmas, is all. Hard to see you in the dark without trees and lights.” Dani smiles into herself when Jamie laughs it off, her head swinging back and her, oh,

Her throat is something Dani hadn’t quite yet studied. 

“Awfully obsessed with a stranger's lack of merriment, are you?” Jamie’s eyes tick towards her, just a flash, before taking a sip of her drink with a quirk on her lip.

“I guess I just am insanely curious how somebody can live in this gorgeous country house, all alone, and not want to spruce it up. You know you might have more visitors.” 

Dani watches the way Jamie hardens again and she immediately regrets her words. This beast, this beauty, wanting to be alone in her castle hadn’t quiet occurred to her - not until now.

“Maybe I like being alone. Maybe I don’t like unwelcome house guests traipsing about, demanding tinsel. Ever think of that?” Dani bristles at her words. Those beautifully smooth, rough and stinging words. 

But Jamie’s face plays with just a small hint of teasing on it and Dani thinks that maybe she can needle back. She scoots in closer, too close she thinks just a second too late, when Jamie turns to her, full faced and skeptical, and her smirk turns into a wry smile with a raised eyebrow.

Dani bites her lip, “so maybe this is crazy,” she lingers on the word and watches as Jamie looks down, briefly, at the way her lips form the words and Dani tries not to let it settle inside her, “but I get the feeling that you don’t really want me here.”

Jamie laughs and nods her head and raises her glass as if to say  _ cheers _ and Dani feels proud of herself for getting a genuine smile out of her.

Dani settles back again, further away, safer, against the back of the sofa and finishes her glass. “You know you didn’t have to pick me up and bring me back to your lair.”

“My lair, huh?” Jamie picks up the bottle and motions to Dani’s glass to refill it. “Just wanted me to leave you there screaming in the middle of the road with a dirty wedding dress on? Poppins, I may be a bit of a twat but that would just be evil.” Her brows furrow and Dani doesn’t want to focus on how the nickname settles low in her belly and twirls around.

Dani hides her face behind her now full glass and shakes her head, embarrassed at just how out of sorts she was the night before.

“You wanna tell me what that was all about then?” And something about Jamie’s question feels honest, like she wants to know the answer and not just out of morbid curiosity but out of something akin to care.

Dani weighs it for a moment before setting her glass down on the table, buying herself time.

“I was engaged.”

“You don’t fucking say.” 

Dani raises a brow and motions with her hands up in a defensive stance in a way of saying  _ I know, I know.  _ Jamie sits back, gets herself comfortable and Dani continues,

“I was engaged. Well, I’m supposed to be married by now, I guess. The wedding was last night and I-- have you ever been somewhere and just realized, out of nowhere, that you needed to be somewhere else? I mean, literally anywhere else?”

Jamie nods and Dani nods and something about the light from the fire and the wine in her stomach just makes the words come easy.

“I just, I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t marry him.” The fray on her sleeve is inviting and so Dani picks. She picks and picks at the thread and hopes it won’t unravel. “Ever since I was little, I knew Eddie. He was always just right there and he loved me so much. He really did. And I loved that he loved me. My mom barely loved me and my dad-- Eddie loved me. And I loved him in so many ways but it was never just… the right way, you know?”

Jamie’s eyes soften and Dani thinks that she may have unlocked a door inside this cold, closed off house.

“I thought something inside of me was broken. Every time he kissed me or showed me off, I thought I was broken and that maybe I just wasn’t meant to feel what all those books and movies tell you to feel. I thought, maybe I was lucky that this wonderful man could love this broken person. And who was I to walk away from that.”

“You’re not broken.” Jamie’s voice is so sure and Dani wants to believe her, believe this stranger who knows nothing about her but seems like she could. 

“I think-- I think that maybe I just wasn’t with the right person.” Dani leans back forward for her glass and takes a big sip. “I think maybe I wasn’t with the  _ right _ type of person.”

Her voice is heavy and she thinks she feels the way her eyes are getting wet and so instead she focuses on Jamie and her eyes and the way they are looking right at her when she so seriously says,

“Like you picked an elf when you really wanted Santa.”

And the moment feels so heavy, so loaded, but Dani laughs at the simplicity of it all when she just says “I think I want a Mrs. Claus instead.”

She expects a flinch, a bristle, or any sort of recognition really when she says it but Jamie just stays still. Rooted to her spot and her drink. Dani thinks briefly that maybe Jamie doesn’t totally get what she’s saying, doesn’t grasp the weight of those words and how when Dani says them they lift off and float into the air and get sucked away into the fire and she can finally breathe.

“I’ve never told anybody that.” 

Jamie looks at her, strong and steady and her eyes are bright with the way the fire cracks and Dani feels the sparks. Feels them on her skin and in her air and on her lips. It feels electric, even with no power. 

“I always thought Mrs. Claus was kind of hot.” Jamie holds up her glass and tilts her head and Dani feels, for the first time in maybe forever, that being heard and being understood were two different things.

And suddenly, it’s starting to feel like Christmas even in this dark, empty space.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I find Dani so hard to write, so this was a bit of a battle. I hope you enjoy. I would love your feedback. Happy Thanksgiving, feed me comments.


	3. Christmas Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m a perfectionist when it comes to writing and guys I cannot explain why writing Dani in 3rd person is my mountain to tackle but it’s been a fun exercise.

Dani has never been able to figure out tea, or coffee, or breakfast. She never really had a reason to, Eddie always made it for her. But there’s no more Eddie, there’s just Dani and Dani is an utter mess in the morning without caffeine. 

Which is exactly why she’s staring at a mug and a pot and a tupperware full of grounds and trying to figure out exactly how to get a decent cup of coffee out of it.

She’s thankful that Jamie has a gas stove as she lights a match and places it to the burner, igniting the low flame with a gentle  _ click, click, click.  _ There’s still no power and the snow is still coming down and she thinks that maybe there’s a foot or two piled up on the ground. 

It’s cold, freezing really, and Dani is thankful that in addition to another flannel button down, Jamie left her with the oversized hoodie she was wearing last night.

_ “Here, take this. It gets drafty down here at night.” Jamie pulled the black sweatshirt over her head and handed it to Dani as they parted ways in the foyer. Dani licked her bottom lip and tried not to look at the way the shirt under rode up her toned stomach as she separated the clothing from her body.  _

_ Dani looked down at the garment in her hand for a moment and she couldn’t describe the pull she felt to put the cotton to her nose and see if it smelled the same as the shirt she had been wearing all day.  _

_ “If it gets too cold,” Jamie looked around as if trying to figure out a solution to their predicament - the candlelight that littered the halls flashed and Dani studied her eyes. “Well, if it gets too cold, I’m upstairs. I have plenty more where that came from.” She nods to the sweater.  _

_ And suddenly, Dani is feeling warmer already. _

She lifts the hood over her head and burrows her chin into the comfort she finds there - the soft cotton acting as a blinder to the cold air that whips around her face. 

She fills the pot up with water and continues to stare at the loose coffee grounds in front of her, trying to figure out how one gets into the other and how they create coffee from that. And just as she’s about to scoop a spoonful of the ground beans into the lukewarm water, she feels more than hears or sees the way Jamie enters the room.

“What do you think you’re doing?” The tone isn’t so much accusatory as it is confused and Dani smiles at the way it almost sounds light. 

“I-- uh--I thought maybe I-- wanted to make some coffee this morning.” Dani looks down at her hands and the pot and frowns at the fact that she has nothing to show for her good intentions. “But I can’t seem to figure out your system here.”

She looks up at the face in front of her, delicate in the way the morning sun bounces off her cheeks. Her eyes are green and blue and Dani can’t decide which she would rather them be. She thinks she likes the way they mix together. 

Jamie is in her own flannel button down today and Dani tries not to focus on the way the sleeves are rolled up on her arm and the way the black ink bleeds out from under the edge and why it makes her body curl into itself. Jamie gets as close as the countertop and leans her body against it casually, calmly, confidently. 

She smiles, though it’s a bit mocking. “Well, of course. Don’t mind me then. Can’t have an American without her coffee in the morning.” She bows her head into her chest before looking back up through her eyelashes and Dani feels something pull deep in her chest as Jamie takes a small step towards her. 

“Just, uh, one thing.” The corner of her mouth pulls up and its devious. She takes another, and then another.

Dani holds her breath as her mysterious housemate slows to a stop directly in front of her. She loses it entirely when Jamie leans in close, her fingers wrapping around Dani’s that are gripped to the handle of the kettle. She thinks she feels lips ghosting the shell of her ear as the hood falls off the back of her head, Jamie’s nose nudging it out of the way. And then,

“This,” her fingers squeeze Dani’s as they lift the pot of her hand, “is a fucking  _ tea _ kettle.” 

It’s a good thirty seconds before Dani breathes again and realizes Jamie is pulling out some other sort of contraption from the cupboard. 

* * *

Turns out, it was a coffee press and Dani was forever indebted to the people of France for inventing it as the cozy brown liquid ran through her veins and energized her for the day. 

Jamie is watching her sip it as she takes in the morning, watching the snow fall onto the window outside. She’s thinking about how the snowflakes stick and melt and how their unique pattern etches itself into the water stains left behind. She thinks about how sometimes she feels like the water, but how she hopes she’s the snowflake. 

“I’m going to guess you’ve seen snow before?” Jamie’s gruff accent cuts through the air and Dani looks over at her and nods. 

“Yeah, I’m from, well, I guess not too far away from here.” She thinks about it for a moment, trying to count how long she was driving before her car sputtered and shot out. “Maybe like 3 hours south of here? Just a small little town.”

Jamie stirs her tea and then puts the spoon in her mouth, licking off the excess. Dani watches her mouth carefully. “Let me guess.” She points the spoon out at Dani and closes one eye. “You were headed to the North Pole to find your Mrs. Claus?” Dani laughs and Jamie nods her head as if confirming it. “Well, sorry, Poppins. All you got was a cranky elf.”

And Dani thinks she sees something flash quickly across Jamie’s eyes but she doesn’t dwell on it. She doesn’t dwell on how right that statement feels, she was in search of something. She just isn’t sure how to tell if she’s found it.

“I actually have no idea where I was headed.” And then it occurs to her suddenly, “I don’t even really know where I am now, actually?” 

Jamie smiles and its so absurdly smooth when she says “where do you want to be?” in the same way that she asked her, that first night, what she wanted her name to be that Dani thinks maybe she has, maybe she found something she hadn’t been looking for at all.

“I want to be…” Dani taps on her chin in thought, watching how Jamie plays along with the fantasy of it all - eyes wide, blinking and waiting. “I want to be lost in a winter wonderland.”

“Ah well-- you’re in luck.” Jamie sits up straight and puts her foot [that Dani had only just realized was perched on the chair beside her] back onto the ground. She takes another sip of her tea. “I know how to get there.”

It’s silly really, the way this woman has brightened in just a short day. It’s silly really, the way Dani thinks it might matter more than it does. It’s silly really, the way she wants it to.

“Oh, is that so?” Dani thinks this might be flirting but she’s unsure. She’s never really done it before.

Jamie nods and her smile says that yeah, maybe this is flirting. “You want to see the property, then?” Dani smiles and it almost hurts the way her lips crack in the cold but then Jamie rolls her eyes and it all just pops.

* * *

Dani doesn’t know how she was expecting to see the property in the middle of a snowstorm but with both her arms wrapped around Jamie’s thin but strong frame on the back of an ATV as the wind lashes against her face was absolutely not it.

The property is far larger than she had imagined it being, far larger than the portrait on the wall had indicated. There wasn’t really much in particular that Jamie was showing her, she was mostly just bounding through piles of windswept snow and weaving in and out of the large oak and pines that they came across. Dani gripped tighter, just in case.

It was several minutes later before Jamie stopped abruptly, seemingly in the middle of a field, and Dani was forced to pry herself away. Jamie slunk away from the seat and landed harshly with two feet in the snow before turning out and away and Dani couldn’t wrap her mind around what exactly was happening. 

There were trees lined up in front of them, dark and foreboding. The house was so far behind them that Dani couldn’t see it over the hills. They truly felt alone out there and Dani relished in finally being  _ gone.  _ Being far away from wedding planning and bossy mothers and crying kids and angry parents. She felt far away from the problems and closer to  _ something _ else. 

She looks over at Jamie. Jamie, whose jawline could slice through ice. Jamie, whose accent was thick and rough and bruised. Jamie, who puts on a tough attitude and is impossible to read but Dani finds herself wanting to learn her language. Jamie who was suddenly looking back at her with a sincere look on her face when she tilts her head to the side and asks,

“Do you feel lost yet?”

The question sends Dani into her thoughts, trying to pinpoint in there was a conversation before this that she couldn’t recall. But all she could focus on was the way the wind picked up Jamie’s musky perfume and whipped it in a circle around Dani’s head.

“I--I, I’m sorry, what?”

Jamie’s eyebrows raise. “Lost, do you feel lost?”

It felt personal and Dani wrapped her arms around herself tight. It didn’t feel like Jamie’s business to know, but yes, Dani did. She often did. Lost was the only place she ever really felt these days.

“I-- I mean, I wouldn’t say I feel lost as much as I--”

“Poppins.” Jamie states and her eyes pull together and Dani shakes the words out of her mouth. “Lost in the winter wonderland.”

Dani wants to curl up in the snow and freeze like a block of ice. She shakes her head. “Oh, I--”

“Come on, then.” Jamie hops back onto the seat of the four-wheeler and pats the space behind her. “I got another place to show you.”

* * *

It was a few more places, it turns out. Jamie showed her the creek that she used to catch minnows as a child in the summer. She showed her the garden that blooms ‘the most beautiful flowers’ in the spring. She showed her the trees that turn and change and shed their life every fall. 

Jamie showed her everything that should mean something, probably do mean something, but she left out exactly what that something was. It only served to leave Dani more hungry to know about this casual and cautious stranger. Know how she ticked, what she craved, what she saw and what she wanted.

The sun is high above and the heat of it is reflecting off the white snow as it burns at Dani's rosy cheeks when Jamie pulls the four-wheeler up to the garage and turns it off. By now Dani had learned that the cut to a silent motor was her cue to disengage from the petite frame in front of her and dismount but she found herself lingering just a second longer each time. 

“I just have to grab something.” Jamie turns back to Dani as she unlocks the side door, watching how she tottles nervously behind. “You can come in, get out of the wind.”

This beautiful stranger is a mystery, Dani thinks to herself, as she watches Jamie enter into the dark garage. She’s enigmatic and she’s brooding and she’s so reserved it almost makes Dani want to scream but instead, Dani just watches her. She’s like this impenetrable stone that Dani so badly wants to crack, just to see the gem inside. 

Dani follows her into the garage and watches as she rummages through some boxes, taking the opportunity to look around the piles of old metal - looking for anything resembling a clue as to the secrecy of this woman. It’s peaceful in the dark room. Dani can feel the spirit of what lies inside - can feel how this space has filled itself with warm memories and soft secrets. 

She walks back further, past her own broken down vehicle, and to the untouched space beside it. It’s there that she finds another, larger vehicle, covered gently with a dirty, white linen sheet. Dani itches to lift it up, see what it covers. See what stories it could tell.

“Is this--” Dani begins to ask, turning to find Jamie quietly standing behind her with her arms crossed and a curious look on her face. Curious but gentle, open.

“Can I?” Dani takes a corner of the sheet into her hand and starts to lift up. Jamie nods to the truck; giving permission. And it feels like a step towards  _ something. _

It’s beautiful, that’s Dani’s first thought. It’s dull and it’s rusted and it’s old and cold but it’s beautiful. It’s -

“A 1950 Chevy 3100.” Jamie wipes her hands on the sweater in front of her. Dani marvels at how she’s already covered in dirt, despite being in here for not even 10 minutes. It’s charming, really.

“It looks like--”

“The Christmas truck?” Jamie arches her eyebrows and there’s a knowing grin on her face.

“Do you always need to finish my sentences?” But it’s not said with any malice and Jamie just smiles as she walks towards it and runs her hand along the top.

“It was my dad’s. He used to fill the bed up with trees and park it in town during Christmas.” Her eyes are twinkling and Dani thinks this may be the most at ease Jamie has looked since her arrival. “He always used to say it was his duty to bring the holiday spirit to the non-believers. It was a silly tradition, I always got so embarrassed by it but-- well, when you’re young what doesn’t embarrass you?” She laughs and it’s light but haunted, Dani thinks. Remorseful almost. 

A few things occur to Dani in that moment, in that haunted laugh, but she doesn’t voice them. She just watches as Jamie loses herself in memories.

“Anyway, it stopped working a few years after he passed and I’ve been trying to get it running again ever since.” Dani sees that her eyes have changed from bright to hollow and she knows there’s more here, more to this car and this story but Dani thinks that this is enough for now. She won’t push her.

“He sounds like a wonderful man.” Is all Dani says and it feels like it’s the right thing when Jamie turns back, leans on the side of the car and just  _ looks. _ Just looks, hard eyed and lock-jawed and offering as much as she can with her gaze that she can’t offer with her voice.

“Was, yeah.” Her heel clicks on the dirt floor; once, twice. “Yeah he was. Was my best friend, really. Taught me everything he knew with cars and with life. Which wasn't a whole bunch.” She chuckles to herself like she had just remembered an old joke and then her face sets in a sad frown. “But the Christmas traditions, he took those with him when he died.”

Dani wants to step forward, just slightly, and place her hand on Jamie’s arm. Instead, she pinches her fingers together and smiles softly when she says “you could always try to make new ones.”

Jamie nods to herself, to Dani, but doesn’t say anything in return. Dani wonders if maybe she should take it back, if maybe it was too familiar and she was still too foreign but before she can, Jamie just pushes off the truck and says,

“Want to learn how to drive the clunker out there?”

* * *

Jamie is getting frustrated, that Dani can tell. “No, you have to hold back this little trigger while your leg kicks down on this.”

“I don’t understand why it has so many buttons.” Dani looks around and tries to remember all that Jamie had explained to her not five minutes earlier. 

“There aren’t any buttons, Poppins. It’s a clutch and a kick start.” Jamie smiles and pulls the beanie on her head down below her brows and then fixes it back onto her forehead again.

“Why doesn’t it just have a key that turns over?” And it seems like a logical question to Dani and she’s waiting for a logical response when Jamie just stops and says, 

“I-- because-- actually, I don’t know.” Dani is really starting to love that smile, that tiny hitch in her lip, that only comes when she’s been stumped. “Okay so, just, hold this down” Jamie puts her hand over Dani’s, the one resting on the clutch. ”And kick this leg-- down-- like that” Jamie pushes a firm hand down on the top of Dani’s thigh. It burns and it tingles and Dani holds in a sharp breath. 

The bulky machine roars.

“See,” she reaches around with her right arm and pulls the throttle while the engine, and Dani’s entire body, hums to life. But Dani isn’t going to think about that, not now, not while she can help it so she just rolls her eyes and says,

“That just seems like a lot of unnecessary work to turn it on.” 

But Dani can’t really find it all that deep in her to care when she sits down and Jamie holds onto her hips and leans forward into her ear and says in a husk that would rip the bark off the trees,

“Just fucking drive.”

* * *

It's dark again by the time they return to the house. They had eaten what they could find in the kitchen and Dani had opted for a shower - once again thankful for Jamie’s house and it’s gas propelled hot water heater. 

Dani lights the few candles in the guest room and changes into the warm, dry pair of sweatpants that Jamie had handed her right outside the laundry room. 

She thinks it might be time to face them, the people on the other end of the phone as she sets the candle down by the bed. But she thinks it’s too late when she picks it up and the blessed thing is dead. She tries not to focus on how it feels symbolic almost, that it died at some point while she was busy burying her head in the back of Jamie’s neck while she lost herself somewhere on the sprawling property. 

The whole day she had lost herself, which is exactly what she had said she wanted to do. And while it was Christmas and there were no presents under a bright tree to unwrap, it felt like the greatest gift anybody had ever given her. 

She thinks again, like she found herself doing most of the day, to Jamie and her crooked smile and her raspy drawl. She thinks to her bright eyes and her smooth demeanor and she finds herself aching to be looking at them now. 

Because while Dani can’t quite put her finger on why, she feels like she knows this woman - despite not actually knowing anything about her at all. She finds familiarity and comfort in the way she speaks, in her smell, in her delicate touch. She finds a list of things in only two days that she had never once found in fifteen years with Eddie and she can’t linger on that for too long or else it would drive her mad. 

Jamie hadn’t given her anything, not really, but she was starting to think she could. That she could give her a lot of things that she hadn’t let herself want. She thinks maybe it’s time to want. She thinks maybe it’s time to actually  _ have. _

And just while she’s thinking of her, as if on cue, she appears. A soft knock on the door and her head peaks in and she says,  “I have something for you.” And then she’s gone again and Dani is left to follow her blindly. 

And it should scare her how promising that feels. It should, but it doesn’t.

Jamie fiddles nervously in the center of the foyer when Dani catches up to her. She’s rocking back and forth on her heels as she stuffs her hands into the pocket of the sweatpants that sit low on her hips. Her head is bowed low and in candlelight, she’s stunning. 

Dani looks around, waiting for Jamie to move, but content to watch the way her face works through whatever is playing through her mind. Dani can’t help but watch as Jamie bites down on her lip, can’t help but note how plump and full and pink those lips are. Can’t help but feel like if she could just reach out and run her thumb across them, she would feel how soft they were. 

But then Jamie is looking up through her eyelashes and tilting her head towards the study and Dani thinks she would go wherever Jamie asked her to.

She doesn’t know what she expects when she walks into the room lit by a raging fire, but it’s definitely not what she sees. 

“You--is that, did--” Dani whips back to look at Jamie and she’s confused, more than a little, but she also can’t think of any way to finish her sentence so she just looks. 

Jamie for her part is unsure. Her normal confidence is gone and she’s leaning against the archway. She’s shy when she says, “everyone deserves a Christmas, right?”

Dani walks to it, holding out her hand to see that it’s real. “Where exactly did you get this from?” 

Jamie pushes off the wall and makes her way towards Dani in the center of the room, her pace slow and confident to any outsider, but it feels new and timid to Dani. “I’dunno if you were just that enraptured by me earlier but if you recall, I have an entire property full of trees, Dani.”

It’s the way her name rasps out of this woman’s mouth… Dani reminds herself to breathe.

“You cut me down a tree?” She lets the bristles poke at her fingers and she thinks this might be the sweetest thing that anybody has done for her. She thinks Jamie’s stone may finally be cracking. But Jamie just waves her hand like it’s nothing and smiles when she says,

“It’s, like, three feet tall. It’s barely a sapling.”

Jamie is close now, closer than Dani realized, and she can feel the way the air around her has warmed as Jamie’s arm brushes against hers. It takes everything in her not to focus on the way her skin burns at the touch of Jamie’s fingers just so lightly on the back of her hand.

“Still. Nobody has ever cut me down a tree before.”

Dani forgets the tree, forgets it entirely almost, as she looks back from it to Jamie and finds herself being studied. She feels the air change, feels it charge, and she thinks about how Jamie’s cheek would feel under her palm if she were to reach up and cup it. She thinks it would be smooth; thinks it would be cool and soft and smooth. She thinks she could do it, thinks maybe Jamie would let her, too. 

“Yeah, well, don’t get all that excited about it. There’s still no lights and if it gets much colder I’ll have to haul it up to my bedroom and burn it for warmth.” Jamie laughs and her eyes are teasing and light up but they don’t leave Dani’s even for a second. And Dani isn’t sure who does it first but one of them is leaning in. 

“Jamie, I-- I don’t know what to say.” 

There can’t be more than a few inches between them and Jamie’s stare is holding her in place like an anchor and everything around them is buzzing in a way that Dani always thought was just hyperbole.

“Don’t have to say anything. I just, I heard what you said today and you were right - it’s never too late to start new traditions.”

Dani closes her eyes and just lets herself feel Jamie in her space, feel the woman’s energy and how it’s wrapping around her like a hot coil and Dani thinks maybe she could. Maybe she could just lean in a little further and take her in completely and then,  _ and then _ …

And then it’s cold again and, “I better get to bed.”

And Dani wants to stop her, wants to bring her back into her orbit but Jamie is already halfway out of the room when Dani even opens her eyes to realize she’s alone. 

“Oh. Oh, yeah, okay.” She sputters out, trying to bring her heart back into her chest.

“Goodnight, Dani. Merry Christmas.”

But she’s gone and Dani can still feel the ghost of her lips and she decides, right then, that she won’t run this time. Not this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be a little... more. I crave your feedback.


	4. Boxing Day; Pt 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have good news and bad news. The good news is, this is now 6 chapters. The bad news is, you have to stick around for an extra chapter.

Dani can’t sleep. Her eyes are wide and mind is racing and all she can think about is the woman lying asleep above her. She wonders if she’s warm and if she’s layered and if she’s dreaming of her. She wonders a lot of things, and she can’t sleep.

It has to be somewhere around two in the morning, she had been laying idle for hours now. She lifts her hands and she studies the way the light from the moon hits it and how the shadows cast along the wall. And it distracts her for a moment, thinking of what it would be like, look like, feel like, for Jamie to thread her long narrow fingers between her own. Her curiosity peaks thinking of how they would mold and curl and anchor her down.

She presses her hand to the bed beside her and she thinks about having her wrists held in place above her head. She thinks about how the weight of it would feel above her, how much lighter it would be than Eddie, how freeing it would be to give up that control. She closes her eyes and lets the way her body buzzes and burns at the image take over her.

She thinks about Jamie’s fingers and how they curled into her hips as her body pressed in tight behind her on the four-wheeler. She thinks about what it would have felt like if Jamie had pulled her just a little harder, marked crescents into her skin with her nails. Dani thinks about the burn, the pain of it all. She thinks and she thinks and she crosses her ankles and she feels the pressure build.

She thinks about Jamie and how hot her breath was on her neck when she leaned forward to give her directions, or instructions, or a quick jibe and Dani rolls over onto her stomach and tries to regulate her breathing.

She’s cold in this bed but she’s hot beneath the sheets. 

Dani lets her mind spin with thoughts of before. Jamie had been so close, just at the edge of her reach, and Dani let her walk away. She wishes now that she had reached out and grabbed her wrist, pulled her back and in and through. She wishes she had just leaned forward and let her lips brush against the plump pink ones in front of her.

Dani had never kissed a woman; didn’t need to in order to know she wanted to. But never one as much as this woman. She had never so badly wanted to rip and claw and gorge herself into somebody the way she wanted to now, right here, at this moment, with Jamie. She had never craved somebody like this. 

She recognizes it now, Jamie had awakened something in her that had lied dormant for so long. It brewed just under her belly button and it stirred inside her chest and it settled between her legs. She couldn’t lay still, couldn’t not think about the way she longed to be touched and have that touch set her on fire. 

So she didn’t. She didn’t lay still. She got up, she walked. She lept.

* * *

Dani holds her hand over the door handle, lets it hover. Her courage had dwindled on the steps and she was close to turning around. She could, she knew. She could just turn around, go back to the bed she left and she could pretend that she never tried this at the start. Jamie would never know.

Her hand shakes and her body trembles and she chastises herself. Her breath coming in short pants and the way she could still feel everything, a culmination of her thoughts as they settled deep inside her, was stifling. 

Her hands brace gently on the solid oak door and she regulates her breathing. She feels stupid for this - for thinking that this bold intention would ever be received well. She lays her head on the door and let the way the cold wood feels on her forehead wash over her. She closes her eyes in the darkness and she feels herself coming down from the high of it all. She feels her,

Falling forward.

The door swings open with a start and a startled “Jesus, Dani. What the fucking Christ are you doing?”

But Dani’s body is propelling forward and she doesn’t understand how it didn’t hit the ground. Doesn’t understand until she feels Jamie’s arms around her waist, holding her up. 

“I’m-- I’m so sorry. I just-- It was cold and I couldn’t--” Dani rights herself back on her own feet, backing up from the woman in front of her just a half a step. Not enough to be out of her arms, not entirely, but enough that the air was breathing was hers alone. “I’m sorry to wake you.”

She takes in Jamie, standing shyly in only a thin pair of boxers and a white tank and Dani’s mouth waters.

“What are you doing up here?” Jamie’s lips play with a hint of a smile and a look that Dani refuses to mix up with hope.

“I--” but suddenly Dani couldn’t find her strength. She had come up here for sex, that’s why she had come up here. But now, suddenly, that sounded absurd. It sounded utterly mad, even to herself. So she settles on, “I got cold. I couldn’t sleep.”   
  
Except it was the exact opposite. She hadn’t been cold, she had been hot. She had been burning up and,

“Well,” Jamie looks behind her, over her shoulder, as if weighing the options. Dani can tell that Jamie is deciding if she wants to offer this, offer what Dani is so hoping she does, and her face contorts up and down and all around while looking for the answer. Until, “come on, then. You can sleep in here tonight.”

It’s dangerous, Dani thinks as she follows Jamie back to the bed. It’s loaded, Dani thinks as she curls back the blanket and slides under. It’s terrifying, Dani thinks as she feels the weight of Jamie get in on the other side.

She feels the heat of the other woman’s body as she pulls the blankets up tight around her chin. Jamie is beautiful in the moonlight, her features sharper with the shadows and Dani has to tuck her hands under her body to keep them from reaching out and just taking what she wants.

But then, Jamie turns to her and catches her eye and just for a brief crackling moment, Dani thinks maybe Jamie wants it too.

She holds her there, rooted in her gaze. She feels it, the spark, as it travels from her fingers to her toes and she can’t stop her foot from sliding over the cool cotton bedspread and grazing the bare leg she finds. Jamie’s breath hitches and Dani feels bolder. She feels bold enough for her hand to splay across the sheet and wait, just wait so patiently, to see if Jamie takes the chance.

It feels like hours, a lifetime, waiting. But when Jamie lifts herself, just slightly, to lean up on her elbow, Dani thinks the waiting was worth it.

“Better?” Jamie’s voice is low, so low that Dani almost doesn’t hear it and she doesn’t trust her own so she only nods in response. 

She’s lost in the dark waters of Jamie’s eyes. She’s counting the seconds, wondering how long she can hold her breath, afraid of breaking the spell. Breaking Jamie’s motion as she inches closer in the darkness. 

She closes her eyes and focuses on the way she can feel Jamie’s hot breath on her face. She can taste the mint from her toothpaste and she wants, she  _ wants. _ In a way that she has never wanted anything before.

“Thanks for sharing your warm bed,” is what she says and what she means but she also means  _ I want you. _ She also means  _ take me. _ She also means  _ make me yours. _

And she thinks Jamie hears those thoughts too because her breaths are getting labored and her free hand finds Dani’s hip the blankets and her touch is so gentle but also so loaded as it delicately traces along the bone between her shorts and her shirt and Dani thinks if she were to look down she would see sparks.

“Anytime.”

The air is combustible. It’s heavy with implication and Dani can practically hear the way the anticipation crackles and Jamie is practically leaning over her now, her hair cascading around her delicate features and Dani feels it all. Feels the way the ends of her curly brown hair tickle at her chest and she reaches up and takes the locks between her fingers and pulls lightly. 

There’s time to go back, Dani thinks. They haven’t crossed any lines, there’s been no action, and she could go back. She could run back to Iowa, to Eddie, to her life. She  _ could _ but at the same time she  _ couldn’t  _ because just three days with this woman have showed her what she could have if she just leaned up and,

She pulls at the ends of Jamie’s hair harder and suddenly,

Jamie’s lips are warm as she slots her bottom one between Dani’s. It’s hesitant at first, just pressure, as if Jamie isn’t sure she made the right move and Dani is terrified to move. She’s terrified because her chest is about to explode and her skin is on fire and she can’t help but thinks that if she starts moving now, she’ll never stop. 

And Dani can feel the way Jamie tightens and starts to pull away in fear so the only thing she can think to do is pull at the hair between her fingers again. She pulls and she wonders if maybe she pulls too hard but then she can feel the way Jamie smiles into her mouth and opens her lips and really, truly, kisses her.

Her tongue is warm and her breath is hot and Dani’s head is spinning so fast that she grabs at Jamie’s shirt to ground herself. She isn’t sure who makes the sound, but somebody, one of them or both of them, moans so slightly that it's barely audible over the rustle of the sheets as Jamie lifts herself up and over Dani completely. 

Dani pulls at the shirt, needing Jamie closer, needing her body pressed in against her like she needs air. And Jamie laughs, open- mouthed and cocky, into Dani’s throat and Dani doesn’t think she’s ever wanted anybody more. She wants to crawl under her skin and be taken over in a way that’s animalistic and raw and she can’t understand why nobody told her it could be like this.

And when Jamie lifts her hand from Dani’s hip and puts it on the other side of Dani’s head as she smoothly lowers her body down on top of her, she thinks she doesn’t want it to be any other way. Not ever. 

Her lips stings as Jamie bites down on it, it calms when she smooths it over with the tip of her tongue. There’s urgency in the kiss, like neither of them can dig in deep enough, fast enough, hard enough. 

She’s ready, she thinks. She’s ready to give herself completely over to this feeling as she wraps her ankles around Jamie’s calves and locks herself in. It feels like a lot at once and it feels so fast but Jamie’s tongue keeps coaxing out breathy moans from her throat and she can’t think of stopping.

She can’t. But Jamie does.

“Wait.” Is what Dani hears as she lets her hand trail softly up Jamie’s bare stomach under her shirt. “Wait, wait.” And Dani is thinking  _ no, I’ve waited long enough. _ “We should-- we should stop.”

And stopping is absolutely the last thing Dani wants to do right now and her fingers curl and dig into the skin of Jamie’s toned stomach just to grab on to what she can.

“Oh.” She feels the way it’s slipping out of her reach and she doesn’t want this to stop but Jamie is already moving up and away and Dani feels the absence of her body.

She doesn’t move far, not yet, she’s just hovering over Dani and Dani wants to grab her and pull her back because her lips are addictive and she doesn’t think she could ever get enough.

“You’re-- you just-- you almost just got married and maybe this is just a-- I don’t want to take advantage of you.” Jamie’s words are labored and desperate and Dani can see the way she’s begging her to hold on tighter. She moves back, her hips shifting and she’s sitting now, sitting on Dani in a way that has her unconsciously bucking her hips up, looking for something, anything, but Jamie’s running her hands through her hair in a way that says she’s frustrated and Dani loses her words. 

She should say  _ you’re not,  _ she should say  _ take advantage,  _ she should say  _ I want you.  _ But instead she says nothing. She just watches as a litany of emotions play across Jamie’s face and she can’t think of the words to change her mind. She can’t say  _ I’m falling for you and I need you to catch me _ to somebody who is a stranger but  _ fuck me _ seems like it doesn’t mean enough. 

But she can’t find the words she needs and her mouth opens and closes like a guppie searching for air. Jamie looks at her and it’s pointed but still, the words don’t come and Dani is achingly desperate to find them.

And so, in the absence of anything, any words to keep her there, she goes. She lifts her hips and her legs and she moves back to the other side of the bed and Dani is cold. 

* * *

Jamie isn’t in the bed when Dani wakes up. She’s not in the shower or the kitchen either and Dani can’t help but feel like it’s something she did. She plays over the night before and she doesn’t think she made it up, she doesn’t think it was one sided or misplaced, she thinks it was exactly where it should have been. But Jamie hasn’t said a word to her since she rolled away and Dani feels hollow.

She finds her, eventually, in the garage. Which - if she were level headed in her temporary panic - should have been the first place she checked.

Jamie doesn’t turn to acknowledge her when she walks in. Doesn’t make a noise or a peep, just leans deeper into the engine cavity and Dani props herself against the door, content to just watch her in silence.

It’s warm in here. Far warmer than the house and Dani furrows her eyes in confusion as to how that is until she notes the electric heater in the corner of the room. 

Jamie is feeling the heat from it, Dani notices fairly quickly. She’s in a similar white racerback tank to the one she was wearing last night. The one Dani had fisted in her hand. The one that Dani wanted to rip off her back and burn in the fire and,

Dani clears her throat.

Jamie lifts her eyes and nods ever so slightly in her direction before putting her head back down. She’s got dirt and oil running down the sides of her face and sweat running down her arms and Dani can’t help but feel like she wants  _ everything _ from her. 

But mostly, she just wants to talk to her, wants to hear her voice. Wants to know that she didn’t totally wreck everything in a moment of want.

Dani shuffles nervously on her toes and pulls at the strings of the hood around her neck. Back and forth and back and forth like if she does it hard enough, maybe she would feel it burn the way Jamie burned her skin last night.

“I, uh, borrowed some clothes,” Dani looks down at the oversized gray hoodie hanging from her thin frame. “I hope that’s okay.”

“S’all right.” Her voice is clipped and Dani can’t tell if it’s directed at her or the car when she groans audibly.

Her arms are flexed and Dani stares at the way they twitch under the strain. Dani can’t help but wonder what those arms would look like holding her up against a wall or a bed or that car. She can’t help but think about how they would tighten and pop while they would anchor her to whatever surface Jamie pleased.

“Are you a big Northwestern fan or…” She lets the question trail off while her eyes take in the curve of Jamie’s breasts under the tight cotton. Her mouth waters.

“I went there for University. Or, tried to.” She groans again and Dani notices how her accent gets thicker with frustration. “So I guess if you consider giving them a hundred thousand dollars and only getting half an education and a shitty sweatshirt as a fan, then sure.”

Dani hums in understanding. She looks around her and thinks about what in here she could be bent over and she shakes her head. 

It occurs to her when she can’t see far into the back of the garage due to darkness, “I thought you couldn’t do anything without power?”

“I can do some.” There’s a clank of metal and Jamie stands suddenly, hitting her head on the hood. “Fuck me.”

Dani thinks,  _ please. _ But instead offers, “Do you want some help?”

Jamie wipes her hands off on a towel and Dani takes in how disheveled she looks. Her hair poking out from the bandana on her head, sweaty and sticking to her face. Dani wants to wipe it away, wipe all this tension away.

“Do you suddenly know about cars?” Her arms cross and her smile widens in a most devious way that makes Dani want to slap her and kiss her at the same time.

“You could show me?” And it’s not that she cares about the car, but she cares about Jamie and she wants to find any excuse to be near her.

“Come here then.”

Dani moves into the space that Jamie shows her and looks down into the engine.

“See this knob right here?” Jamie points it out and Dani nods but isn’t sure if she’s looking at the right thing. 

“I need it to turn this way while I reach down there and loosen that one. But it’s a bit hard to do it with only two hands.” She holds out her arms in showing and Dani smiles at how playful it all feels. She’s grateful that Jamie is smiling at her again.

It feels like hope. It feels like a lot more when Jamie steps in behind her and pushes at her shoulders to square her up.

Dani bristles when she feels Jamie push against the length of her back. Jamie is warm; the heat radiating off her and through Dani’s spine. It takes all in her not to spin around and meet her lips and beg her to show her everything she’s been missing. She pushes her hips back into the body behind her and hears how Jamie takes in air between her teeth; the way it hisses sending shock waves through her body.

Dani feels bold, bolder than she ever has, as she rotates her hips, just ever so slightly, in a way that could easily be written off as an accident. But when Jamie drops her head in between her sharp shoulder blades and blows a thick puff of air out of her mouth, Dani knows she doesn’t care.

“Dani.” Jamie’s voice is muffled, both a warning and a plea, into her coat. Dani feels the way the word travels down her spine and into her toes and she presses back more - meeting the resistance as Jamie’s hands drop to her waist. 

“Tell me what you want me to do.” Dani whispers it and she feels the way Jamie sighs into her, the way her breath comes out in sputters along the nape of her neck.

“I want you,” Jamie squeezes at her hips once, twice, “to make sure that’s tight,” she squeezes again and then lets go, “so I can get this one.”

And Dani isn’t sure if she’s doing this right, doing anything right, when she closes her eyes and lets Jamie reach around her to get to where she wants. She decides she doesn’t care. Decides that she will give herself to the count of 10 to turn around and take what she wants. 

But when she gets to 8, her back is cold and her body is shaking and Jamie is gone.

She’s standing at the door and she looks hungry and feral and she’s wiping her hands on her shirt and she just says, “It’s snowing again,” and the moment is gone. Dani doesn’t know that she can wait much longer.

* * *

The snow turned to rain by the time Jamie was finished. It wasn’t delicate like the snowfall, but harsh and hard and loud. The powder on the ground turned brown and slushy and the beauty of it all melted away. 

Dani watches it with a frown on her face. It feels symbolic somehow; a missed opportunity to take in all the beauty of a moment before it’s washed away. She had cooled, tremendously so, as she wrapped her arms tight around herself. She reached her foot out, right into the path of the rain, and watched how it slapped at the leather boot [a borrowed leather boot] and then rolled off. 

Dani dreamed to be the snow, but she often felt like the rain. 

“Ready?” The voice washes over her like a wave and she turns to see Jamie standing there, eyebrows lifted and looking outside; a litany of unanswered questions swirling between them.

It feels heavy, like the water as it fell. Was she ready? She thought so. She really did.

She looks out into the dark sky. She watches the way the clouds bend into themselves, angry and screaming. Their ominous presence like a warning, growling for change. Bring in the storm, for when it passes, there is beauty. She looks out into the dark sky and she counts. On 10, she’ll leap.

“It’s pouring.” She looks at Jamie but it’s not in protest, it’s in excitement. Excitement for the unknown, for the beauty after the storm.

And when Jamie reaches a finger out and brushes lightly against the back of Dani’s hand, she can’t stop herself from lacing it with her own. Latching on and praying that when she leaps, Jamie will catch her.

“We better make a run for it then, Poppins.” There’s a tug and then she’s wet. She’s soaked. The storm is here.

It doesn’t take long to get to the house, no more than 30 seconds, but she’s soaked from head to toe, from skin to soul. A crack of thunder echoes in the air and Dani feels the way her feet vibrate underneath it. It’s coming down in sheets and Dani can barely see in front of her but she can’t keep her feet moving. Because suddenly, she doesn’t want to run. She’s tired of running. She wants to be chased and caught and conquered. 

So she stops and she looks to the sky and she just lets it all wash away. It's freeing, entirely. It’s freeing the way the water [freezing as it may be] rinses everything away, every single minute of every year she spent running away from who she was and what she wanted. The droplets are falling hard onto her face and with each one, with each small bullet from the sky, one more piece of her leaves and floats away in the flood.

She laughs. It’s exhilarating. It’s entirely exhilarating to throw away Danielle and pick up Dani and just  _ stop. _

She feels a tug on the hem of her sweatshirt and she looks back down at Jamie, wet and waiting, with a quirk on her face. And she’s done, she’s done running and waiting and stopping and going. She’s done, she's leaping.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry guys, this was literally just 4500 words of Dani thirsting and very little actual drinking. I would have kept going on this, but I like cliffhangers and this felt like a natural place for it. You know what's coming next.


	5. Boxing Day; Pt 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi. You guys still here? I know it's been a while so I won't keep you any longer. Here we go. Longer A/N at the end.

As the door clicks shut and the sound of the rain drops out to a dull hum, Dani learns three things.

The first; doorknobs hurt. They hurt an inexplicable amount and Dani can’t say that she’s all that turned off by it. 

Jamie has a hunger in her stare as she presses Dani’s shoulders back into the fogged glass. Green [or blue; Dani still hasn’t been able to decide] eyes turn black like the clouds above, the ones that opened up and swallowed them whole as they ran from the garage to the house, and Dani can’t help but wonder if maybe Jamie will do the same. Swallow her whole, right here, right now. 

The doorknob hits her square in the back and the pain is welcomed. She’s reminded, quickly, that this moment is real. That everything about this is real. That she left her life and she walked, accidentally on purpose, straight into a new one. She’s reminded that Jamie is real, and that right now the way she’s looking at her is a way that nobody has ever looked at her before. Hungry, restrained and tormented, and all together on fire. 

Their last kiss, the first kiss, was sudden and it was the culmination of the overwhelming hunger Dani had been denying herself for decades. It was Jamie’s deep stares and low voice and warm body. It was the crook in her smile, the sweat on her brow, the oil on her lip. It was the dark ink on her skin that Dani was dying to decode. It was all these things at once, and then it was over.

And it would have been easy to write off, to pack up herself and her car and drive back to her old life once the thrill of it all settled, if Dani hadn’t stopped in the rain and looked up. She found answers in the rain. And when she looked down, and looked at Jamie standing there with a sly grin in a tight white t-shirt, soaked through and clinging to her thin frame, she found the questions too. She found the question she had been asking herself since the moment she bolted out of the dressing room and headed north east on the highway.

_ What do you want? Really want? _

And now, with a doorknob in her back and Jamie hovering before her, her hair wet and her lips parted and her breath coming out in hot spurts across Dani’s face, she knows the answer is that she wants  _ this.  _

And when Jamie leans in close, a whisper on her lips asking Dani if she’s sure, if she’s ready to leap, she can’t find her voice. Just a simple nod, a simple tug on the front of Jamie’s drenched shirt, a simple kiss pressed to the corner of her mouth. 

She lingers there for a moment and the world stills. There’s a tension between them, a dense energy that is almost too thick to cut, too present to ignore. There’s something in the anticipation of it all that has Dani closing her eyes and laying her head back on the glass and Jamie shouldn’t follow, she shouldn’t be tethered to her in the way they move, but she is. She is and Dani has to force herself to breathe before she--

She leans up and grabs Jamie’s bottom lip in between her teeth and just like that, the thick fog between them drops, everything suddenly so clear.

The second kiss is different than the first. The first felt like falling, the second feels like leaping. 

The cold water drips down from Jamie’s wet hair and onto her dry lips and Dani realizes just how thirsty she’s been, how much she’s been craving to be hydrated. 

There’s something in the way Jamie grabs at her jaw, strong hands and long fingers wrapping and gripping and clinging and it’s all the confidence of a woman who has never been denied what she wants, that has Dani opening her mouth, letting a soft moan spill out. Jamie’s nails dig in so hard that Dani is sure there would be - will be, even - marks but she can’t find it in herself to care. It’s even more intoxicating the way she runs the pad of her thumb over Dani’s bottom lip, letting her tongue brush against the back of her teeth.

Dani has never been kissed like this. She’s never been so entirely consumed where she feels every single nerve in her body tingle at the way lips slide from lips to jaw to neck to throat.

Jamie is pressed in, her wet body pushed tightly against Dani’s own, leg slotted between the heavy denim that’s weighing her down and Dani is thankful that something is keeping her anchored to the ground. Jamie rolls her body from toes to fingers and into Dani harder, fuller, faster.

The second thing Dani realizes is how hard it is to remove wet clothes.

Jamie releases her jaw and braces both arms above her head, pinning her in place. It keeps her just off the edge, just out of reach, and Dani is aware that Jamie’s letting her dictate the pace here.

She pulls at the hem of the wet shirt, letting the dampness of it settle into her skin as she tugs her closer. There’s another crack of thunder outside and the way it rattles the door has Dani breaking the kiss and opening her eyes. Jamie is flushed, skin chilled and Dani wants to see if the way her cheeks and neck are painted in a hue of red trails down past the collar of her dirty white shirt.

It’s not easy to peel it off, not with the way it’s sticking to her skin. Not with the way Jamie has her head rested against her temple, breathing hot air into the skin below. Not with the way that she wants to keep kissing her. 

Dani’s hands are trembling against the cold skin, very aware that this is far past the point of no return, far past a place she’s ever been, and she only gets it halfway up Jamie’s torso when she’s reaching down and tugging it over her head in one swift movement before moving Dani’s right hand to the clasp of her bra and whispering,

“We’ll go as fast or slow as you want.”

And that’s really all Dani needs to pop it open with her index finger and let it fall away.

Jamie’s mouth is back on her, hungrier, open and wanting and all Dani can think about is where she wants it next. She wants it all at once, everywhere, taking and owning and biting. And it comes out heady and feral when she breathes into her mouth,

“I’m yours. However you want me.”

The third thing Dani learns is that Jamie is incredibly strong.

Strong enough to lift Dani’s legs up around her waist and effortlessly drop her onto the top of the dryer. It’s maddening, the way Jamie has her eyes locked in and the way her mouth doesn’t twitch when she undoes the button at the top of Dani’s jeans and pulls them, and then everything else with it, off slowly. Her boldness is a direct contrast to Dani’s trepidation at being open and bare and naked, spread out before her.

Jamie seems to read this, seems to know exactly what she needs, as she drops to her knees and begins peppering soft kisses at Dani’s ankle, on the inside of Dani’s knees, thighs, the crest of her hip. She seems to know it when she whispers how beautiful Dani is, how brave she is, how wonderful she is, in between each inch of skin under her lips.

And when Jamie taps on the crook of Dani’s knees and beckons her forward, Dani knows what’s coming. She knows it but at the first touch of Jamie’s tongue to the wet, slick heat at the apex of her thighs, she thinks that she couldn’t really have ever prepared for Jamie. 

It would be embarrassing, should be, the way she grinds her hips down onto the mouth below. It should be mortifying the way Jamie’s name falls from her lips like a plea. It should be troublesome how Dani bucks and grips and curses and begs. For Dani of yesterday, it would be. Being this unabashed, this unsettled, this undone would be entirely shameful.

But when her hand wraps itself in Jamie’s wet hair, as her moans grow deeper and louder and longer, when the tip of Jamie’s tongue enters her, when she clenches around it with a grunt, when she feels herself release hot and dripping and Jamie laps it up with a gentleness she’s never know - Dani thinks she wouldn’t ever be able to go back. She wouldn’t ever be able to go back to who she was yesterday because, as it turns out, she was a whole different person then. 

* * *

Dani learns some things about herself too.

Dani, as it turns out, is a big fan of the easy way words roll out of Jamie’s mouth and the way those words send sparks down her spine and make her toes curl back into themselves. She doesn’t know how they make it up to Jamie’s room, or into Jamie’s bed, but she recalls it included wobbly legs and firm hands and being entirely entranced by a half naked Brit who was looking at her like she was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

_ “I want to--but I’ve never, and,” _

Jamie had insisted that she was happy to take the lead when she laid her back on unmade sheets and oversized pillows and dipped her head, laying lips on the most sensitive part of Dani’s neck. Her insistence grew as she hovered above, sucking and biting at the pulse point at the bridge between neck and shoulder and it doubled when she brought calloused fingers down to dip in and out and through. 

_ “Fucking shit, Dani, I don’t think you understand what you do to me.” _

Dani didn’t need any more assurance that Jamie wanted this, not when two fingers curled inside of her and teeth bit down into her neck and Jamie’s hips moved against her thigh, searching for release of her own.

_ “That’s it, you’re almost there.” _

And as Dani came and shuttered and closed her eyes against the impact of release hitting her again, she found that she wanted to learn more things. 

“Can you...show me?”

Turns out, Dani was a fast learner. 

They didn’t move, didn’t trade places, didn’t switch positions, as Jamie kept herself propped with on her elbow and took Dani’s hand in her own free one. They didn’t move, didn’t trade places, didn’t switch a thing when Jamie brought Dani’s between her legs and their joined fingers ran up through the dripping wetness there. 

“Feel that?” Dani nods and Jamie’s head drops onto her shoulder, biting at the sharp collar bone.

“Just,” Jamie doesn’t finish her sentence as it trails off into a whimper. Their fingers moving in unison in tight circles over the sensitive bundle of nerves, “Fuck. Just do that. Just do what you would do to yourself.”

And Dani thinks she understands why people crave this - this right here, making somebody else reach this peak - when Jamie releases her hand and brings it up to her neck, gripping lightly as she let’s her hips sink down on Dani’s fingers, moving in short thrusts. Because when Jamie comes undone above her with a watery sob in her throat, she thinks she could keep doing this forever.

* * *

It’s quiet now. Gasps and pants and moans have faded into soft sighs, long intakes of air, and - though Jamie would never admit this - soft snores. 

Dani’s watching her carefully through her dreams. Half draped across, legs tangling up in her own, the sheet resting around her hips, and Jamie’s inked arm curled up under her head.

She feels free now to study the images there. She hadn’t wanted to look before, afraid of the way her eyes would give her away. But now, now she could trace the lines, trying to decode this woman, this dark and mysterious woman, who had entirely captured her every thought. And when she reaches out her hand and her fingers glide across the skin it finds, she lets it. And it was only then that she realizes that the ink was purposeful, it was the same art she found downstairs in the hall. The same art of the farm, of the hills and the house and the barn. It was an exact print, directly on Jamie’s skin, wrapped around her shoulder and elbow and wrist.

And beneath it, beneath the beautiful black and white drawings, was raised flesh. Long thick bands of flesh, marred and warped and raised and--

Burned. 

Dani traces the lines delicately. Jamie stirs.

“They are a bit sensitive.” Her voice is raspy and low, eyes blinking open, watching the way Dani’s fingers lift carefully off her skin.

“Oh-- oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t--”

Jamie’s eyes are heavy and soft and Dani feels the way they pull her in.

“S’alright. Just not used to somebody touching it.” 

Dani wants to ask, ask what happened, ask if it hurt then, if it hurts now, ask if it was an accident or on purpose or if it’s why she stays out here alone in the woods. But instead she watches the way Jamie’s eyes flick all around and over the scars and she knows that she doesn’t need to ask. She doesn’t, not when Jamie takes a deep breath, opens her mouth and says,

“I came to the states when I was 16. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to do anything at 16, not really, except be a little twat.” She laughs and Dani feels the way her heart grabs at the idea of a pouty teenager stomping around the muddy fields, throwing fits all the way into the sun.

“My dad was from here.” She waves into the air above her head. “This house was his grandparents, and then his parents, and then when they died, he came back and brought me with him.”

Dani watches the way her throat catches and the way her eyes pop and she knows she wants to hear more. She wants to hear everything. “Tell me about him.”

Jamie pulls her arm out from under her head and rolls onto her back, looking up into the still air. “He was a soldier. American. Gritty as they come, and mean. Shit, he could be mean. Never to me, mind you, but to everyone else. He was sharp and tough - had this way about him that you always knew he was angry with the way he would go quiet and his eyes would scream. I guess I got that from him.” 

Jamie looks over and her eyes squint into the dark and she must find something in the way Dani is looking at her because when she closes her mouth and breathes through her nose, the next time she opens it, she doesn’t stop.

“My parents, my real mother and father, they never wanted me. She left when I was 5. Just left. Found other things she loved more like booze and drugs and freedom. He didn’t want to be a single dad, didn’t want to raise some brick that was just weighing him down. I was alone most of the time, and I was so sad. I was so alone. I was just a kid, kids can’t raise themselves, can’t feed themselves. And Dennis, my father, he started drinking more and-- there was an accident. Wasn’t his fault, well, at least I told myself for a long time it wasn’t his fault but--”

She swallows down dry air. 

“So social services came and then it was foster care, and it was miserable. Houses filled with greasy old men and kids filled to the brim. And one day, I left for school and I never came back. Found myself sleeping in an alley, and then sleeping in a box, and then sleeping on a stoop. I was little, scrappy, and I would steal from people in bookstores and coffee shops. Just pennies, never much, but enough to buy a biscuit and,”

“How old were you?”

“Ten.”

“Ten?”

“I told ya, scrappy little thing.” Jamie winks and Dani feels the tug to her as she rolls in closer, placing a delicate hand over her chest and studying the way she can feel the beating heart beneath her palm.

“So one day I picked the wrong pocket. He caught me halfway out the door. Picked me up in his arms and scolded me. Told me that if I kept going down the road of a vagrant that I’d end up dead. I was ten! He bought me lunch and made me sit but he didn’t make me talk to him. He just told me about his life - his life in America. How he joined the army young, how he got hurt in combat and was discharged, how his wife had passed and how he needed a fresh start, even though he was retired now - far away from the farm he grew up on and the town around it. He was kind and he cared and he told me to come back the next day, and then the next, and then the next. And then one day, he told me that I could have a home if I wanted. And I guess, I guess I wanted a home.”

“So John became Dad and Dad eventually made it official with the courts and bought a flat and we lived quite comfortably - or as comfortably as an older man living off his inheritance and a bratty teenager battling hormones could. Until, well, until he decided it was time for us to come back here and take in this place. So, we did.”

Dani wants more, craves more, she wants details and moments and every thought and feeling Jamie had - has - but she knows that this is already more than she ever expected to get.

“Five years ago, the day before Christmas, we went into town to get a tree. I argued with him that we could just cut down our own tree, we didn’t need to go buy one, but he didn’t want to take away business from some,” her voice drops low and she mimics a midwest accent in the most terrible way, “ _ kind stranger whose entire livelihood is based on people not cutting down their own trees, Jamie. _ ”

“We had this silly tradition of putting up the tree at the last possible fucking moment, but dad loved his traditions. So, we went into town. He was driving, it was dark, it started to snow.” Her voice drops and catches and tears inside her throat and Dani knows that whatever is coming next isn’t something she wants to hear, it’s not something Jamie wants to say, but she knows it’s coming and she knows she needs to listen.

“I don’t even remember how it happened. I wasn’t paying attention to the road. I wasn’t paying attention to him or his stupid singing or stupid christmas songs on the radio. I was paying attention to myself, my own world, my phone, my problems, my girlfriend at the time, and I wasn’t paying attention to the fact that a deer jumped out and he swerved and hit a telephone pole. The next thing I know, I could taste smoke and flames and I was laying in snow and-- I think I yelled. I yelled for him. And I ran to the truck, laying on it’s hood and I reached my arms into the broken glass and the fire and I grabbed at him and I tried to pull him out. I tried. I yanked and I pulled and I didn’t care that the fire was burning me. I couldn’t feel it. I never felt it. I never felt anything after that.”

Dani knows that if she could see Jamie’s eyes through the dark, she would see sorrow and sadness and she so wants to take that pain away. She can’t though, nobody can, so she leans forward and she presses her lips to Jamie’s cheek, her temple, her jaw - tasting the salt on her skin. She wipes the tears away with her smile, that’s the best she can do. That’s all she can offer.

And when Jamie turns to her, her eyes shining with the unearthed pain, Dani decides maybe Jamie needed saving just as much as Dani did that night in the middle of the road.

“You see, Poppins, Christmas is for people with families. I don’t have any family. I don’t have anybody, really.”

And Dani doesn’t know what makes her say it, doesn’t know what makes her feel bold enough to be here, fully, ready to put this woman back together, but it still feels right when she says,

“You have me.”

And as she leans forward and captures Jamie’s bottom lip between her own, she expects the way her heart leaps into her throat, and she expects the way Jamie flips her onto her back, but what she doesn’t expect is for the power to suddenly jolt back on.

* * *

The way the electricity hummed made the day feel real. It made the time that has passed since she walked out on Eddie feel longer, harsher. And the way the numbers next to her text icon would tick up each time she looked down at the screen was beginning to pick at the back of her brain.

Which is how she found herself sitting on the kitchen island, watching Jamie move around the space in front of her, tapping her legs as she passed, Dani’s phone pressed into her ear, while she waited for her mom to pick up the other end.

It rang once, twice, three times and Dani heard the way the pots and pans clanked in the kitchen and she thought about how Jamie’s hands felt wrapped around her waist and she considered hanging up the phone and throwing it out into the snow. 

But she remembers the last text from her mom,  _ please just tell me you’re alive _ , and she thought about Jamie and her story and she couldn’t let more time pass without giving her mother that small comfort.

The phone clicks and her throat swells up when she hears, “Danielle?” Because it’s not her mother. It’s not her mother who answers.

“Eddie.” She brings her fingers up to her eyes and presses in. She can already feel the way her anxiety is bubbling at the surface just with one word from him. Jamie’s energy falters. “Um-- I thought-- I thought I called my mother.”

“You did. I’m here, I’m here with her. We have been so worried, Danielle. We thought-- we called the police.”

“You didn’t need to do that, I’m fine.” 

“Danielle,” she grinds her teeth at the way he says her name. It’s been just a handful of days but already she’s become addicted to the way Jamie calls her  _ Dani _ and the way that feels like home and this, this feels suffocating. “You just left. Nobody heard a word, you were just gone. And then you turned your phone off and we just-- we thought something had happened to you.”

“I didn’t turn it off, it died. The power went out.” 

“The power went out where? Where are you?” She can hear the way he shifts the phone in his hands and the way her mother whispers something to him in the background and it occurs to her,

“Eddie take me off speaker phone, please.”

There’s another shuffle of air and his phone is back, more robust and louder this time when he says, “Danielle, tell me where you are.”

She can feel the way Jamie’s carefully moving around her now, keeping wide of her space, and she feels guilty. She feels guilty that she didn’t sort this all out before leaving, before meeting somebody, before falling in love quicker than she could even get out of her wedding dress. She feels guilty about lying to Eddie, to her mom. She feels guilty that she has unfinished business with a forgotten fiance and a half dressed woman making her dinner and no plan as to how to remedy any of this.

“I’m not far. My car broke down and I’ve been staying at a motel. Just needed to clear my head for a couple days.” She bites her lip at the lie. It feels wrong to pretend her life hasn’t changed in a way she can’t turn back from in just a few days. It feels cheap to act like she’s nowhere, doing nothing, around nobody. 

“Well, let me come get you. I’m going to come get you.” She hears him turn away from the phone and ask for a pen, ready to write down an address.

She hears Jamie pass behind her, the side door that she was pressed up against just hours before opening and closing with a thud.

“Eddie, no.” 

“What do you mean, no? You have to get home.” There’s a question in his voice, an innocence that reminds her that he used to be her best friend. Once upon a time, he knew everything about her.

“That’s not my home anymore, Eddie. I need,” she breathes, thinking, about all that she needs. She needs to be loved, she needs to believe in something, she needs to be free, she needs, “I need more.”

She listens for a moment to nothing. It’s quiet on the other end of the phone, it’s quiet in the kitchen, and she’s caught in the middle. 

“Can we meet up to talk about this?” Eddie’s voice is laced with desperation and Dani feels herself cracking. 

“I don’t know what you want me to say.” She whispers into the air, resigned and hurting and exhausted.

“I just want you to tell me the truth.” Dani thinks about this, the truth. What the truth is. That she’s gay. That she doesn’t love him, not the way she should. That she thinks she found her soulmate in a grumpy British woman in the middle of the woods. She thinks about these truths and she doesn’t know, she doesn’t know if she can handle so much honesty. “Just come home. Please. And we can talk.”

* * *

It’s not long before Jamie comes back into the kitchen. Her mood is twisted and Dani thinks that maybe Jamie needs the whole truth too.

“I think-- I have to go see him.” She says it into her chest, her chin dipped down into the collar of the soft hoodie she grabbed off Jamie’s dresser. It smells like her and Dani wants to wrap herself in it and float into a world where there’s no Eddie, no Judy, no responsibilities or burdens or Jamie with a hard line across her forehead as she washes the dishes in the sink.

“You gotta do what you gotta do.”

Jamie’s shoulders are tight as she scrubs hard against the teflon. Dani watches the way her mouth is pressed in and her lip is between her teeth and she has the same look she had the first night Dani got here. 

“I just-- I just ran out without really thinking it through and now I’m here and--” Dani slides off the counter, phone left behind, and settles behind Jamie. She feels the way the girl releases herself into the hold, how she relaxes back into her and how her breath shutters softly.

“Listen, Poppins, you don’t have to explain it to me.” But Jamie’s voice isn’t settled, it’s sad. It’s resigned. 

“But I don’t want to go. I-- I want to stay here with you and this little bubble, and play in this pretend world and just-- a break away from him and my responsibilities and my real life. Just tell me to stay.”

Dani takes a step back to let Jamie turn around and face her. She’s hoping to see the something in the blue, sometimes green, eyes that tells her that she’s wanted here. She’s waiting for the words to form on the lips that she can still taste, the words that tell her she’s needed. She’s waiting, she’s waiting, but all she sees is a woman that’s retreated back into her shell. All she sees is a broken heart.

“You can’t play pretend forever, right? Have to get back to what’s real.” Jamie is moving further from her - in distance and in spirit. And Dani feels desperate to grab at the strings that remain.

“That’s not what I meant, Jamie. This is real, it is. It’s--”

Jamie shakes her head, “It’s been three days. It’s been a nice break for you but--”

“Why are you being like this?” There’s frustration coursing through her now. She brings her hands to her face and presses in on her eyes.

“Because you were always going to leave, weren’t you?” Jamie’s voice is louder, harsher, and Dani wraps her arms around herself, curling in. “That was the deal. Once I had you all mended up, I’d send you back out on your way. This was just a little vacation for you, a little break. Just a chance to clear your head.”

Dani wants to yell, she wants to argue and she wants to fight and she wants to do it with this woman. This infuriating, stubborn, beautiful woman. But she thinks she might be the only one. She thinks she might be the only one fighting to hold on to this, whatever this was.

“Tell me to stay, Jamie.” And her fingers are gripped, white knuckled and rough, around the beating in her chest and it hurts. It hurts to think about walking out of here, walking away from something she’s never felt in her entire life. 

“Car is all ready to go for you to leave in the morning.”

But it’s terrifying to think that maybe Jamie isn’t ready to catch her.

“So that’s it? Just-- just bye and see ya around?”

Dani feels the sting behind her eyes. She feels the choke in her throat. She feels the seizing of her chest. She feels everything she’s ever felt and it’s all at once and it’s entirely overwhelming and she can’t stomach the way she knows the next words that are coming out of Jamie. She knows it because it’s quiet and it’s broken and it’s like lashes against her body when she hears Jamie mumble under her breath,

“I’ll see ya around, Dani.”

So yeah, in the end, she ran. She ran away from the fight. She ran from herself. She ran back home, back to the place that she never truly felt at peace. She ran from Jamie. She ran and she hoped and she prayed that maybe this time somebody would chase her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This year (last year) was a fucking shit. A little fucking shit. No I mean, it was literally the worst year. Towards the end of it I found myself losing my job, my grandfather died of COVID very suddenly, and my wife and I took a separation. I was sleeping on a friends couch. So writing was impossible. I planned to give up on this, I didn't think I had it in me to come up with anything, much less words. But this fandom inspired me to come back, to fight a little bit harder against myself and for the things I love, to pick myself up and to do what I enjoy doing. So thank you to those who kept pestering me to come back and finish this, to those who are still reading this. I owe you guys a lot more than you realize. One more chapter after this and Sunday Candy will be updating soon as well.


	6. Valentine's Day

The noise pulsated through Dani, reminding her, unceremoniously, that she was still capable of the anxiety that always had plagued her.

The kids were buzzing with excitement - as was typical for them with any sort of break from the normal Monday through Friday. Maybe it was the sugar from the cupcakes Dani always made sure to bring in or maybe it was the fact that there was just a minor changeup in their routine, but their energy enveloped Dani from head to toe. And today, with the pinks and reds and heart shaped boxes, their frenzy was calculable. 

She thinks back to the Valentine’s of the past. Eddie wasn’t a romantic, and Dani never thought herself one either, but they both tried to play the part. It became monotonous, much like every rudimentary part of their shared life together - a standing reservation at 7pm at Rico’s in town. It was where they went first, when they were 18 and finally old enough to share an upscale meal on their own dime, and Eddie never thought to change it.

And maybe that was part of it all - nothing had ever really changed for Dani. She was still the caged bird. Even after she picked up her keys and made the huge step to change the trajectory of her future, she hadn’t truly set herself free. She was still here, in this town, teaching these kids. The only true difference was that now she knew what it felt like to flap her wings and they shuttered to fly again.

She smiles despite herself at their chatter. She smiles at the exchanging of cards, the talk of chocolate candies and the examining of chalky hearts with words like  _ be mine _ or  _ xoxo.  _ The group of 9 year olds were far too young to know the consequences of giving your heart away, a notion with which Dani was all too familiar. 

There was an innocence here, one she wished to protect. She watched as a little girl with a mop of curly red hair delicately handed over her cut up construction paper to the boy who sat alone in the corner of the room. The gesture enough to make his green eyes light up under the thick rimmed glass that sat heavily perched on his nose.

It reminded her of Eddie. It reminded her of their young friendship, how she marched up to him one day and declared them best friends and took his hand in her own. They were only 7 and Eddie had just moved all the way from across town. He never spoke, Dani didn’t even know if he knew how, but she could see his gentle soul and felt the tug of familiarity to him.

They grew up both slowly and quickly and all at once. Dani remembers little from their early years, mostly just running through the sprinkler on hot summer days or trading pogs in between class bells, and the rest were like a hazy dream; the moments in between dusk and dawn. Like fuzzy camcorder VHS tapes that skip from scene to scene. She remembers creepy crawlies and catching lightning bugs in jars. She remembers their laughs and their tears and she remembers having a best friend. Her only best friend she had ever had.

Eddie was easy to be around. He was quiet and shy but he was sweet and he always looked at Dani like she hung the moon. So when they were 12 and Eddie leaned in to kiss her outside the bus stop one fall afternoon, she let him. Sometimes she wishes what her life would have been had she just turned her head.

“Miss Clayton?” Dani hears the small voice pull her out of her memories and spins on her heels to see the young girl in her cotton candy pink dress and a mess of chocolate all over her face.

“Do you need a napkin, Delilah?” The girl nods fervently and Dani moves to the back of the room, stepping over the landmines of toppled backpacks on her way. 

Delilah snaps the cloth away as Dani hands it to her and Dani looks around the room, shaking her head at the mess these kids managed to create in just ten short minutes. She claps her hands together loudly and one by one little sets of glowing eyes look up at her, waiting for instructions.

“Okay let’s settle down. Everyone clean up your area and then back to your chairs.” Her voice carried heavy over their heads - the one small bit of authority she carried in her life.

They tidy up quickly while Dani looks over the lesson plan on her desk. She sighs, realizing that it wasn’t even lunch time and she has several more hours of this before she could go back home to her tiny little loft and undress whatever bottle of wine seduced her for the night.

“Miss Clayton?” Dani can feel the start of a headache peeking through her temples. Their quiet murmur settling as they each fall back into their chairs.

“Yes Tommy?” It comes out as a sigh as she points to the young boy with his hand stretched far into the stale classroom air.

“Do you have a valentine?” His small voice is shrill and Dani closes her eyes, trying to think of the best way to handle the inevitable question that comes every year on this day.

“Yeah who is  _ your _ valentine this year?” Another child chimes in from the back of the room, before several more begin to their own chorused versions of the same wondering.

“Well,” Dani starts, dropping her voice down low and she lowers herself to lean back on her desk, as if she’s about to tell them all an intimate secret, “you know a valentine can be anybody. It can be your mom and dad. It could be your best friend. It could even be your dog.”

“That’s silly, Miss Clayton. Chester can’t be my valentine, she can’t eat chocolate!” 

A little boy from the middle row turns around to his friend, “My dad said that mommy is his valentine and that if he doesn’t buy her flowers and chocolate, she’ll make him sleep outside.” And then they are off again, chatting amongst themselves about what they know to be fact of this hallmark holiday.

Dani rolls her eyes and her temples pound.

“Miss Clayton, you have a delivery.” A timid voice of the school’s office manager comes from the doorway and Dani turns to see her struggling to hold up a rather large arrangement of white flowers. 

The chatter morphs into a range of oo’s and ahh’s. 

“Oh,” Dani pauses, hesitating to take them in for fear of even more questions from her curious bunch of young minds. “Thank’s Bernice, let me grab those.”

She sets the vase down on the corner of her desk and notes the usual lack of card poking out from the top. It’s a beautiful assortment, crisp white like snow, and she imagines that whoever sent them put much thought into the gesture.

Eddie, she figures. It must be Eddie. 

_ “Eddie, it’s not like that.” Dani’s voice echoes in desperation. She’s desperate to be heard, desperate to be understood. But most of all, desperate to be released of this responsibility.  _

_ “Why didn’t you tell me? Before we got this far?” Eddie’s eyes are soft but his tone is biting. _

_ “I didn’t know.” Eddie scoffs. “I didn’t know, Eddie. I-- I never got a chance to figure it out. You were- we were together so young and I didn’t even know what I was feeling. And then I just started to, change? I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t change, maybe I just started to understand. And you’re my best friend and I thought that was enough. I wanted it to be enough.” _

_ “Then why can’t it be enough?” Eddie’s fists slam on the table and Dani startles at the noise. He’s drawing attention to the table and she wants to slink under. _

_ This was why she had never brought it up to him, why she let each of her passing wants flutter through and away and why she never chased after them. It was why she said yes when he asked her to marry him for the third time. It was why she let him guide her through her monotonous days. It was fear; fear of him and what he might say, fear of losing the only best friend she ever had, fear of her own suffocating self doubt. _

_ “Because.” Dani shakes her head and drops her face into her palms. “I want to wake up beside somebody and watch the way their heart beats. I want to be so turned on by somebody’s mind that I can’t keep my hands off them when they talk. I want to be insane, you know? I want to be absolutely mad with that kind of love. And that’s not-- we can’t ever have that.” _

_ Eddie won’t meet her eyes and she knows that what she says next will crush him. _

_ “I just don’t love you like I should. I don’t love you like you deserve to be loved by somebody. I don’t love you like I deserve to love somebody too. Don’t you want that? For both of us?” _

_ Eddie looks up at her through his thick glasses and she’s reminded of the comfort she always found with him. His shoulders drop out of their tight hold and he picks up his glass of wine, spinning the liquid around and studying the way the red stains the sides before fading away. Dani knows he’s thinking about everything she just said, and she’s hoping he finds peace in her words. _

_ “Eddie,” His face relaxes and he nods ever so slightly. “You had to have known that we just weren’t the right kind of love.” _

_ He thinks about this, for a while it seems. They always had an ease between them, but never a spark. Eddie loved her, loved her more than she could have asked him to, but he couldn’t love the passion into her. They both knew it didn’t work that way. And at some point, at some peak along the way, that had to be exhausting for him too. _

_ So when his lip pulls up, just a fraction, just slightly, she thinks maybe there’s been a weight that’s lifted off him too.  _

_ “Is- um, is there somebody? Is there a girl?” _

_ Dani finds, in that moment, that maybe she didn’t have to lose her best friend. Maybe he’d stick around. Maybe, maybe, _

_ “Maybe one day there will be.” And she hopes, she prays, that the girl will find her way. _

Dani tucks her nose into the flowers and breathes them in. Their scent is subtle yet commanding. They feel like a new beginning, a mystery, an unknown.

She nearly forgets the 20 pairs of eyes staring up at her when she turns back to the class. Curiosity on their faces and she smiles at them as she sits on the edge of her desk.

“I am spending valentines with my absolute favorite people this year.” 

“Who is that?” One asks. “Yeah, who Miss Clayton?” Another finishes.

“You guys.”

* * *

The sun is just starting to set in the corner of the sky when Dani finally emerges from the school and into the faculty parking lot. Her car was the lone survivor of the day, an empty stranger under the glowing lights. Her keys jingle in her hands as she walks the distance to the vehicle for which she held just a small amount of disdain.

It had taken her away from here, sure. It had been her blessing when it had broken down, setting her up for her knight in shining armor. But it also had trucked her away from there, hadn’t given up its last battle, and with it it carried her far from her little slice of happiness. And for that, Dani didn’t know if she could ever forgive it.

There’s a chill in the air, the late winter wave coming in like a bullet through her coat and scarf as it pierces her skin. There’s no beauty here in this dark cold lot, not like there was on that farm some 200 miles away. There’s nothing to warm her heart, not like on Christmas day. So as the frost settles under her skin, she shivers and she remembers. 

She’s exhausted from the day. Catering to nearly two dozen children had that effect on her, especially as of late. Her eyes are heavy and her mind is busy. She didn’t seem to sleep anymore, staying up until the early morning hours with thoughts of  _ her _ so it takes her longer than she cares to admit to notice the note on her windshield. It’s small, discreet, and Dani probably would have driven off without even seeing it if it hadn’t been for its bright yellow color. 

She looks around her car for any noticeable damage, sure that the note had been left by a generous stranger that had dinged her door in a hurry. But when she unfolds it and her eyes take in the delicate loops of the words, Dani already knows who it’s from. 

_ I want to be lost with you. I’ll be waiting on the line. _

It was from a stranger that left a lot more than just a scratch in the paint.

* * *

_ “Can you tell what’s wrong with it?” Dani perches herself on the counter at the edge of the garage, keen to watch Jamie as she works, but careful not to appear too curious. Idle hands toying with anything she can find - at the moment, a raggedy towel - just to keep them from reaching out and offering to help. _

_ “Engine.” Jamie’s curt voice is muffled as she leans further into the open hood. “Can’t tell you more than that.” _

_ It becomes glaringly obvious to Dani that Jamie isn’t one for words. Her sentences are short, brash, and snipped. But Dani was never one to really enjoy the unsettled silence, even with strangers.  _

_ “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. It’s pretty old.” Dani tilts her head to the side and waits to hear Jamie’s smooth accent, but nothing comes. “You know, I’ve had this car since I was 16. I saved up for months just to buy it. My dad was so angry when I came home. He kept telling me that it would break down if I tried to drive it more than 100 miles. ‘Wasted your money on that hunk of junk, Danielle.’ That’s what he would always say. Guess I showed him, huh?” _

_ All Jamie does is grunt in return with a mumbled, “bloody fuckin’ hell” at some obstacle unseen. _

_ Dani let the way Jamie curse settle over her. There was such air of unwavering authenticity in everything she did, every way that she moved, that Dani envied. _

_ Ever since she was a child Dani was a wild heart, with a steady soul. There was always something bubbling inside her, ripping at the seams. A bird, caged, wanting to break free. She recognized what it was now - it was Dani, not Danielle, clawing to be released. To be herself.  _

_ “You know, I used to drive this car all the way to the state line, just to sit there.” Dani announces proudly - and then, after a pause, softly, “I know that must sound pretty stupid. Going to the line, that’s always what I would say. Well, to myself. I never told anybody where I was going. It was sort of my secret spot, you know? Like it was where I would go when I just needed to clear my head and just… think.” _

_ Dani thought back to the dozens of times she parked her car down by the waters edge next to the piers, sat on the hood and threw rocks into the still river. There was something entirely calming about the sound of cars passing overhead, wheels bouncing on concrete, taking their passengers far away from this stifling place. It became the place that Dani would return to unload her heavy mind. _

_ “Have you ever been to Iowa?” Dani asks but is met yet again with a gutted noise. Though the absence of words doing little to deter her. “Not missing much. I never actually really left it, I was always afraid to cross the line. It felt really symbolic somehow. Like that bridge was everything I couldn’t conquer. But it was peaceful to know it was there. I could always cross the line if I wanted. If I ever got up the courage, I could.” _

_ Dani heard a loud metallic clank and Jamie stood and looked at her through the empty space between them. Her eyes swimming like the ocean, whispering like the trees. The green and blue - and Dani really did want to know which it was - hue sparkled in the shadowy room. And Dani thinks, just briefly, just for a moment, that she sees understanding in them. But it’s fleeting when Jamie blinks and her eyes reset to a gray fog. _

_ “Hand me that towel?” _

It didn’t take Dani long to decode the words on the piece of paper that now sat precariously on her lap. And with each mile she drove, her heart pounded into her chest, up through her throat, and radiated out of her fingertips onto the cold wheel as she gripped tighter. She was ready to cross the line.

* * *

It’s unmistakable, the faded candy shell coating of the antique truck.

It’s unmistakable, the mumbled  _ fuck _ that weaves itself through accent and whimsied frustration.

It’s unmistakable, the way Dani’s heart rises and drops like the top of a rollercoaster when she sees the woman who turned her inside out.

The fog is thick, gathering density as the minutes tick, on the top of the water. Dani had parked up above the ravine, wanting to give herself the time to walk, give herself the time to turn around and run should she so choose. 

The gravel cracks under her sneakers and gives her away and when Jamie turns, startled and stunning, Dani knows there’s nowhere to turn and run to now. Now she’s here. Now.

“You know there would have been an easier way to do this?” She calls out into the bitter air, her breath freezing in the dark. 

Jamie chucks a rock into the water and slides off the hood of the truck. “Yeah, know that. Wanted to give you an out, in case you never wanted to see me again.”

Dani can only just make out her outline. Her thin frame looks smaller than she does in Dani’s dreams. Jamie stands, weary, stuffing her hands deep into the pockets of her oversized coat. Dani watches as she sways back and forth, garnering the courage to take another step forward. 

Dani stops a safe distance away, drinking in those words. Wondering if facing this now would be worth damaging the fantasy she had left behind. She can’t see Jamie, can’t see her eyes or the crease in her forehead, or her strong shoulders. Can’t see beyond the shadows and the fog and the memories of those three nights.

“You’re a hard fucking person to find, y’know that? Do you know how many Danielle Clayton’s there are?” Jamie yells out, the wind picking up her words and carrying them away.

“No. I don’t.” Dani shakes her head, incredulous to this woman even attempting to track her down.

Jamie takes another small step forward. Shy, like she’s afraid to scare Dani off into the night. “Alright, there’s only two in Iowa and you didn’t seem to be 73 so... pretty easy to narrow it down, actually.”

It’s entirely odd to see her here, to see her outside those safe confines of the forest and the farm and the garage. It’s odd to see her in a place that Dani only ever knew as an escape. It’s odd that they are strangers but all the while they are familiar and Dani can’t ignore that maybe this too is all just a fantasy.

“What are you doing here?”

Jamie looks back over her shoulder, as if taking in just where  _ here _ actually is. “I got the truck working.”

She says it like a badge of honor. Like a reward one of her students shows her for completing the rope climb or running the mile. She says it like she’s looking for something, a  _ job well done _ maybe, a pat on the back. She shuffles forward, eager to show off her accomplishment. There’s hope in her voice, Dani can hear it, like she’s waited all this time just for this.   
  
“Yeah, took me nearly every day and quite a few stubbed toes from kicking the tires. But I finally figured out that the engine was all corroded underneath and--”

Something in Dani shutters and snaps. Something about this woman, this infuriatingly stubborn woman, who let her walk out and walk away and is now just here. She’s just here, in a place that Dani never invited her and somehow fantasy gives way to frustration and she snaps, her feet moving forward until she’s directly in front of this glorious beauty, this beautiful beast.

“Jamie. Did you come all the way here to show me a fucking truck?”

Jamie’s mouth snaps shut quickly and her eyes go wide. And Dani is thankful when she can hear how there’s at least some shame in the way she says,

“No. No I didn’t.” 

It’s silent for a moment, the air is still and the water is frozen and the world tilts. Dani simmers between anger and expectation. She wants, she wants so much to forget the hard line across Jamie’s jaw when she handed her the keys to drive away. She wants to forget the way Jamie never looked back as she started up the engine. She wants to forget that Jamie let her go without so much as a whispered plea or a stolen glance. She wants to forget, but she wants to remember. 

“I-- I got the truck working.” Jamie repeats, though this time there’s no pride in her voice. “I got the truck working and all I could think of was you.”

Jamie takes a deep breath, letting the air whistle through her teeth. “I have spent so many years alone in my castle, happy to be alone, preferred it really. Just me and myself. Me… and what I chose to let in. And it worked, worked for a damn long time. D’nt miss anything. Didn’t, not even a little think I wanted anybody else there. And then I found you - I mean I literally found you. Looking like a fucking wanker out in the middle of the goddamn road, Dani. Your fingers were pretty fuckin’ blue and I mean, no offense but you don’t really seem like somebody who would be able to make it out in the cold for very long. You were in a bloody dress with no coat. Who leaves the house with no coat?”

Dani doesn’t move, doesn’t bite, just stares, doe-eyed and blank and Jamie shakes her head and lets out a groan. 

“See-- this is-- you are… God you are infuriatingly annoying. You are absolutely mad. You are sunny and warm and I am none of that. I hate that, quite honestly. Like sometimes people want to brood, Dani. I like to brood and you just--”

Dani scoffs, her brow furrowing. “So you came out here to… what? Insult me?”

“No, no.” Jamie’s hands jut out, reaching into the space between them, before she flops them back down by her side. “Right then. I don’t think I even realized how cracked I was before you came. I think I thought that maybe the jagged edges were just part of me, permanent scars, but somehow being around you made me want to feel whole again. And when you left, I think you took some part of me with you. And I want that part back.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this before I left?” Dani yells, pulling at her hair, watching Jamie step closer.   


“Because it wasn’t my fuckin’ business. You have a whole fiance and a whole goddamn family, Dani. I-- what business do I have to ask you to stay?” Jamie takes another step, and another, and she’s in Dani’s bubble now. Dani can see the way her eyes are both blue and green and the way there’s a fire behind them; burning, turning into ash.

“I had known you for three days! Three days. I don’t know anything about you. I don’t know your middle name. I don’t know if you have any siblings. I don’t know where you grew up or fuck, Dani, I don’t even know what you want in life. You’re a stranger, and God, I wish you weren’t, but I have-- had no business asking you to stay.”

They’ve reached an impasse, this is where they are. There’s no winners here, there are no losers. There are two strangers, standing toe to toe, underneath a bridge, in the dead of night.

And Dani thought back to all the times she ran. All the times that life got just a little out of focus, every time she saw what she wanted and she turned the other way and fled. She thought of the way she delayed her own happiness, the way she denied herself refuge. She thought of all the nights she spent pretending to love Eddie, all the days she spent pretending to want what he did. She thought about the steps, rather small but forward, she had taken since she walked out of that church two days before Christmas and left her life behind. She thought about the progress, she thought about the girl who made her want to keep going forward. To quit running. To stop, to walk steady, into the fire.

Jamie’s lips are cold and chapped and yet still all of what Dani had remembered them being. It takes her, this stubborn woman, only a split second before she’s leaning in and up and all over Dani. Lips parted, breath hot, hands trembling as they grip her hips through the thick layers. It’s everything, it’s harsh and biting, it’s wet and it’s sloppy, it’s everything. 

It feels like a rush, and then it feels like a trickle. The kiss turns from angry and bruising to gentle and Jamie’s biting at her lip, holding her jaw. Every unsaid thing is on Jamie’s tongue and Dani can taste it. She can taste the words, she can feel the way they are drawn on her skin with the delicate touch of Jamie’s frozen fingers. They say  _ stay, _ they say  _ please _ and they say  _ you. _

And Dani wants this. Only this. Only now and only forever.

Eddie never kissed her like this, and that’s all she can compare it to, but she can’t imagine anybody else would ever kiss her like this either. Eddie was always fumbling through, awkward and uninviting. His hands never felt right, his body didn’t fit. Not like this, not like Jamie.

“Had.” Dani pants into Jamie’s open mouth.

“What?” Jamie says distractedly as she takes the opportunity to move her lips to Dani’s jaw, throat, ear.

Dani breathes in sharply when Jamie sinks her teeth into flesh. “You said I have a fiance. I had a fiance. I don’t anymore.”

And it’s barely something Jamie doesn’t already know but it’s enough to make her step back and look, really look at Dani. Her eyes speak louder than words ever could. There are promises there, promises of tomorrow, promises to try.

_ Run. _ That’s all Dani’s mind had ever told her. Run, run and don’t ever look back. Run from your feelings, run from that short haired barista in the coffee shop that asked for your number, run from that pit inside your stomach that tells you what you’re feeling is normal. Run, her mind said. It’s what it’s saying now. 

Dani doesn’t listen. And it’s all it takes, that simple look, that understanding in Jamie’s eyes. It’s all it takes for her to tell her mind no. No, not this time. Not ever again.

“Ask me.” She says. “Please, ask me.”

Jamie presses her forehead in, her breath ragged and hot, her lips quirking up and her eyes sparkling bright when she says, “Stay with me.”

And Dani did. In the end; she stayed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fin.
> 
> I promised myself to keep this story relatively short. So that's what it's going to be. Thanks for sticking around, for those of you who hung in there with me.


End file.
